Redheads Japa Cafe — Restaurant in Calgary

This is our second experience at Redheads Japa Cafe weekend all you can eat because we enjoyed our experience so much the last time. We were a group of 6 today. Quaint little establishment, cozy, be sure to book reservations in advance as the restaurant has specific serving times to ensure quality food and service. Great value.

The food is fantastic! Everything tasted amazing and very well presented. The flow of food coming out was paced well and waters were refilled in a timely manner.

We particularly enjoyed the curry (sauce is amazing) and the best topping was the karage (fried chicken), the French toast is soft and fluffy with an amazing caramel sauce, Nimono is unique and highly recommended trying this dish, the Japaghetti is also unique and looks simple but very flavourful.

A couple of constructive feedback are that the pork cutlet topping was a little dry and if you are ordering the regular size of curry the portioning of rice is too much compared to the curry (might need to ask for a side of curry), the small size portioning was spot on.

Now in regards to the service, I can only speak for our own experience we had. All was good until we submitted our second round of ordering food after we were just about finished the last couple pieces of the first round.

The male waiter came back to our table with our order with a good intention of confirming with us to make sure that we would be able to finish our next order, which we were thankful for the thought, however his execution and service after that set the tone for the rest of the meal, and frankly left us all feeling embarrassed and singled out.

When he came back and asked to confirm if we were able to finish everything in this order he proceeded with saying that “I do not eat this much myself but everyone is different” and proceeded to read some of our order out for the rest of the restaurant to hear. There was a moment of awkward silence as we all looked at each other before confirming with him to proceed. The feeling of embarrassment was heightened when another table was leaving and stated “wow you guys can eat a lot”.

In hindsight we appreciated the waiter asking us because as food was coming out we did ask him to discontinue some of our order before it was made.

The last encounter with him at the end of our meal felt unnecessary and prompted me to write our experience. Had this not happened we would have been able to over look the previous mentioned experience. After evaluating what we were able to finish on the second round, and kindly asking them not to start a few items we asked for (as we did not want to waste food), we had finished everything that we ordered except for a small scoop of rice from the regular sized curry (as I mentioned before the portioning of rice is a bit too much compared to the curry). As the waiter cleared our table he made it a point to say that there is still rice here, and at this point they had done last call for food already so we felt like it would be unfair to ask for more curry to finish the rice and even offered to pay for the rice that was left.

The waiter felt it necessary to say that next time we should be mindful of how much we are ordering and walked away, leaving us feeling even more uncomfortable at this point in time.

Because of this experience there won’t be a next time for us. It really shows how customers experiences can impact customer retention.

In saying all that. This is just our own personal experience with service and just because we won’t be returning I still highly recommend going to Redheads Japa Cafe to try their amazing food!! It really is delicious. I hope this review can assist with improving customer experiences and we wish Redheads all the best of luck...

As someone who lived in Japan for a while, this place gets a lot of things exactly right. Their onigiri is perfect. When I lived in Japan I ate onigiri for breakfast most days, this is the first time I’ve had good onigiri in Calgary. If you haven't tried it, it’s basically a rice ball with a flavoured filling, wrapped in nori. I recommend the salmon onigiri as a good introduction to onigiri. It’s served in the plastic packaging like you’d find in a Japanese convenience store so you open it right before you eat it so that the nori is nice and crunchy when you bite into it. If you miss onigiri, this stuff is 100% legit, exactly like you’d get in Japan. I enjoyed it so much, I got a few to go so I can eat them at home over the weekend.

The pickled vegetables are an exact match to what I remember from Japan. Which, as it turns out, may be because their chef is from the prefecture I used to live in. It’s a mild pickling, but still very flavourful. The crunch and the balance of saltiness and tartness is perfect.

The curry is a great, mild, Japanese curry. If you haven’t tried Japanese curry, you should. Think of a beef stew with a thick roux and a hint of Indian curry seasoning, served with rice. It’s delicious, flavourful, and not spicy so everybody can enjoy it.

They also have some items that are their own take on traditional Japanese foods. Today one of their Japas (Japanese Tapas) items was miso-pork skewers. It was a great tonkatsu flavour with an extra hint of sweetness in the sauce. The texture if the meat is a very tender tonkatsu with a nice crunchy batter. It could not be prepared better. At $1 a skewer for happy hour prices I kind of wish I had gotten more.

The menu is nice and varied, with a variety of Japanese foods. If they added gyudon to the menu they would have literally every food I miss from my time in Japan.

If the amazing food isn’t enough, the service is great. It’s a small place so the server had time to get to all the tables as the restaurant filled up. She was extremely fast, attentive, and very accommodating. She knew the menu well and was also familiar with how the food was prepared, so she could answer all our questions. I could not ask for better service.

The location is also pretty decent. There’s free street parking after 6, great for a 6 pm reservation. There’s also a bus stop just one block away. The place itself is nice, the chairs and benches are comfortable. I’m a fat guy, so having enough room to sit comfortably is sometimes a challenge for me. It was not a challenge here.

This is a great restaurant in literally every way I can think of. I cannot recommend this place enough. If you read this far, you should really go book a table now. It is my new favourite restaurant. 5/5 stars, will...

It happened to me too.

"CAUTION Many little flies into the Carry Rice"

Around last summer. I went to dinner here with my boyfriend in Calgary. My boyfriend says he also serves the Calgary Consulate a lot, so I was looking forward to it. It is not a Japanese restaurant that mainly uses sushi, which is common in foreign countries, but a restaurant that feels like a cafe and popular dining room in Japan. So curry was so popular that I ordered the same thing as my boyfriend. It wasn't special, but at first I thought it would be a satisfying taste if Japanese curry could be eaten abroad. But after that, my boyfriend and I couldn't eat curry anymore. That's a lot of little flies flying all the time. I saw other customers paying for the flying fly by hand. Then the fly came into my curry. I became so sick that I couldn't eat anymore. I think the store employees knew that too. Because the gesture of paying the fly by hand was around the kitchen. I think we were in the whole store. When I asked my boyfriend if this was a foreign store, he shook his head and told me that this was my first time. I don't know if that's the case or just that day, but I don't want to go again. After that, I went to fast food restaurants and other Japanese restaurants for several days, but there was no fly. Is the Japanese really the owner? It may have been replaced. It is very disappointing.

This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC Translated by Google

コバエ注意

去年の夏頃。 カルガリーにいる彼氏とこちらの店にディナーをしに行きました。 彼氏曰くカルガリー領事館にも頻繁に料理を提供しているということだったので少し期待して行きました。そこは外国でよくある寿司をメインにした日本食料理屋ではなく、 日本でいう喫茶店と大衆食堂を足したような感じのお店です。 そこでカレーが人気だということだったので彼氏と同じものを頼みました。 特別すごいっていうことではなかったですが、 日本のカレーが海外で食べれるということであれば十分満足できる味だな～と最初は思ってました。 ただその後、私と彼氏はカレーを食べることができなくなってしまいました。それは小さなコバエがずっと何匹も飛んでるんです。他のお客さんも目の前に飛んでいるコバエを手で払っているの見ました。 するとそのコバエは私のカレーの中に入ったのです。すごく気持ち悪くなってその後食べることが出来なくなりました。店の従業員もそのことを知ってたと思います。なぜならコバエを手で払っている仕草をキッチン辺りでしてましたので、、。店全体にいたんだと思います。 外国の店でしたので 彼氏にこんなことはよくあるのかと尋ねると、彼は首を振り、僕もこれが初めてだと言っていました。 普段からそうなのかその日だけがそうなのかはわかりませんが...