East Canteen — Restaurant in Strasbourg

The restaurant is in a charming spot, with a lovely playground nearby: a perfect setting for families with kids. That’s what drew us in, especially since it was one of the few places open on a sunday afternoon.

But as much as we wanted to enjoy the meal, the food fell far short of expectations. We ordered from the kids' menu, along with tonkatsu, ramen, and bibimbap. The kids' meal arrived first, but it was a major disappointment. The chicken was as cold and tough as if it had been left out on the counter for too long, and the rice and vegetable tempura were just as chilly and uninviting. While the kids didn’t mind the cold food, we couldn’t overlook it.

Then came the bibimbap, with the same cold rice, topped with an egg that was more raw than ready. Now, I know the egg is meant to be uncooked, but usually, it meets a warm embrace from steamy rice and veggies, allowing it to blend and cook into the dish. When I raised this with the waiter, I was reassured that the egg was supposed to be raw—fair enough, but surely not served over cold rice? The egg remained uncooked!! They took it back, and I decided to try the ramen, but this too was a letdown. The broth lacked soul, thin as water, the noodles were peculiar, definitely not ramen noodles, and the toppings were little more than a pile of grated carrots, radish, crispy onions, and a few scallions—hardly what one envisions when thinking of a comforting bowl of ramen.

My husband’s tonkatsu didn’t fare much better. It also arrived cold, with a sauce that was more like a thin, runny sauce than the rich, thick coating it should have been. For a place that claims to offer "Asian fusion," the dishes we tried seemed to miss the essence of each cuisine. Perhaps focusing on perfecting one cuisine at a time might help, as none of the dishes came close to what they...

This place looked so good that I was excited to try it. When we arrived we liked the ambiance, got a good table outside by a playground where kids were running around enjoying themselves, and the waiter was friendly and attentive. The menu was an interesting mix of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai. We ordered gyoza, pad thai, baozi and a salad. Yum!

That's when the disappointment set in. Man, was the food bad! I lived in China for a year and have spent time in Korea and Japan, and my wife is Chinese-American, so we're both reasonably familiar with Asian food. This was nothing like it. At first I thought the baozi and gyoza were frozen, but frankly they were so bad that they must have been homemade - frozen would have been better! The pad thai was very undercooked - tough noodles and vegetables - and slathered in a sweet pad thai sauce that probably came from a bottle. At least the salad and the beer were good!

Then to top it all off: I'm allergic to peanuts. I don't go into anaphylactic shock but I do get quite sick if I eat one. I made them aware of this and they said they'd hold the peanuts. After I finished eating I started having a reaction, and when I got home I ended up puking up my dinner. No fun!

The mixed-Asian restaurant thing is a great concept and it's a nice location, so it has potential if the food were actually edible! Or maybe they were having an off night or their cook was out sick, as it's gotten some...

Dissapointed. Reading the reviews it seemed like a nice place, but the place seemed understaffed since the waitresses forgot twice to bring us the extra spoon we asked for and we also had to ask twice for the bill. The food was sub-par, I had the noodles with chicken, it was quite bland and the pieces chicken were way overcooked, tasted like it was pan fried for half an hour, extremely dry with an unappetising texture. My sister had the korean fried chicken and a bowl of steamed rice, in this case the chicken was okay, well cooked but some pieces had stuck together leading the batter to be soggy at the joints between the two pieces. The steamed rice was somehow also cooked wrong, the bottom half of the bowl was extremely mushy, you could not identify the individual rice grains anymore, it was a blob of mashed rice. I would expect a restaurant, especially an asian restaurant to be able to steam rice properly. All in all we were very unsatisfied given the place's...