Kyodai Izakaya — Restaurant in Montreal

I've been to Kyodai twice now, and both experiences were wildly different, with the second visit being quite upsetting and unfortunate.

I'll start with the first visit. My partner and I stopped in there to grab a drink while we waited for our reservation at another place, this was back in January. The staff were super nice with us and we were chatting quite a bit, and they gave us some menu cards to share with others and a stamp card. We were hype, it was a great time! We left and went to our other stop, then we decided to come back for more dinks. The staff welcomed us back and once again we were talking lots and had a wonderful time. They asked us to leave a Google review and I wanted to, but I decided to wait til I could go back to get some food and take photos to add with the review. So I convinced a couple friends by telling them about our experience and sharing the menu, and we all excitedly chose a date and made a reservation.

Onto our second visit. We had a reservation last night (so early March) and it was not nearly as friendly or enjoyable. The staff didn't remember us which was fine and expected, though a little sad. After about 15minutes, myself and the two others we brought had ordered drinks about 10mins before my partner arrived, and we didn't get those drinks til about another 10-15mins after he arrived. We then waited another 20mins at least before I had to waive someone over to take our order. It took a long time for food to come out, which I sort of expected with it all being made fresh and it was a busy night, but items came out in staggeringly different times. One of us had also ordered a miso soup and we asked for it again twice before we decided to just take it off of our order. We also asked for water when we placed our first drink order, and again when we ordered our food, and we had to ask a third time, we didn't get water until after all our food had come out, so about an hour and a half into our visit. Some of the food was good and very tasty, but much of it was disappointing. The squid was overcooked and very tough, the korroke were overcooked and hard, the udon noodle soup was very oily, the tonkatsu ramen seemed like it was made with instant noodles, the sabo and duck tataki had way too much ponzu, it was like it was in a pool of it. We also noticed that we consistently were seeing other tables getting served much faster than us and having much more attention from the staff, while we never had anyone check on us and had to keep asking for things. It was like we were non existent. We decided to leave, and admittedly the person who paid said they didn't overlook the receipt before paying because they just kind of wanted to get out, but a couple hours later we looked at the receipt and saw we were charged for 2 pitchers of Sapporo for 44$. We never ordered Sapporo or any kind of pitcher, so there's absolutely zero reason we should have been charged for such. Overall, a very disappointing experience.

Both of these instances feel like we were in two completely different places, and given how much fun and how much we enjoyed the staff when we first went, I never would have thought we'd return to have an experience that felt so opposite. I would like to think that it was just a busy night or they were understaffed or something, but that last experience was very saddening and I really don't think I would come back after that. I'll still give a couple stars because of how our...

(Edit: Eddie has spoken with me directly and provided a great response to my review with an apology. Thank you, Eddie for taking the time out of your day to try and make amends of last night and using this opportunity to address this with your staff. 🙏🏻)

I went here to celebrate my boyfriend’s birthday with a large group of people and the experience was not great. I’ll start off with the food: the chicken teriyaki was too overly sweet. The ramen and katsu was okay. The duck tataki was good but over priced for a small portion.

The service was so slow, they provided us cups but forgot to give us water and had to wait for awhile for it. They also mentioned they will give us a birthday shot and cake on the house but they never delivered rhat.

We also got our food one after another each time someone was pretty much done eating. And because of that it took us 3 hours to complete dinner. I was fed up since we had somewhere else to be, so I told one of the waitress and kitchen staff about how I felt with the service being slow they never apologized and spoke back to me with a passive aggressive tone.

It would have been understandable if the waiters took their time to check in on us to let us know if they were understaffed and apologized for the inconvenience but it baffles me that our large group was barely proactively checked in on throughout our dinner.

The only acknowledgement I got was from Eddie after leaving saying “thank you for your patience.” (Still 0 apology from anyone) At that point it was too late, this was a terrible birthday dinner. All of us agreed that this was the slowest we had ever ate at an establishment. My feedback to your staff is if someone is providing criticism on your service and how they feel with the experience, it’s important to acknowledge the customer to make them feel heard and attempt to de-escalate the situation by simply apologizing and do something proactive in resolving the issue. Nothing was done after… had there been 1 single proper apology I wouldn’t be writing...

After the relaunch

I was super happy to hear that Tempura Kyodai is back after closing for a while with a change in the management (apparently?). So I went with my family for a Saturday dinner. Honestly, we were disappointed.

First, the menu shrank by a lot. In the main dishes, all the rice bowls disappeared leaving only the hot udons and the curry rice. There are a lot of appeatizers (tapas style). With an increase in the prices too.

For the food, it's not as good as before. It's ok, I can eat it but I can go anywhere for this generic taste. The ebi tempuras were my favorite so I ordered them again, it was my biggest disappointment. Sure, it was crunchy but so oily. There is not this elegance that was previously in the dishes.

Plus, as there were customers, the cooks in the kitchen kept bashing, I suppose the chicken or pork, for almost 30 minutes...

Anyways, tempura kyodai is not what it once was.

Before the relaunch (pictures from then)

Tempura Kyodai is a cute restaurant with great atmosphere and excellent food and service.

Let's start with their specialty, the tempuras. They were excellent. I truly recommend the Ebi tendon which is a bowl of tempura featuring fried shrimps and veggies on rice.

The soft shelled crab curry is up there too. It's the best Japanese curry I have eaten. It's not too sweet and the spices is pronounced enough.

Then, there is the Soba. It's a simple dish, but it's done right. It's very elegant and light, perfect for summer time. The flavours are really balanced here.

The last but not least, the mackerel udon. During winter, who can resist it? The broth is light but so complex. The udon are thin but chewy. And the grilled mackerel complement it well.

Other than main dishes, they have appetizers and specials of the day. Like the Ebi tempura or the monk fish liver. All are delicious.

Overall, Tempura Kyodai deserve their name. Everything was delicious and it's not expensive. You get a huge main for around 20$ or less.

We will be coming...