Tabibito — Restaurant in Berlin

Made a reservation and was pretty excited about the place because it was specially recommended to us and I am personally specializing in the Japanese culinary arts. I am always open and curious to trying out the western take on Japanese traditional cuisine, so trying sushi in Berlin was a must.

We got inside, sat down in this pretty cute, quite cozy little restaurant, but was immediately put off at the hygiene at the prep desk, as I could not unsee this giant fly just flying inside the refrigerator where the raw fish was stored, stuck in there for the whole time without the chef noticing it walking on the precut salmon pieces. I wanted to try their shime saba but they didn’t have it at the time. We ordered the sake-tekka don (salmon and tuna rice bowl) with imitation crab I can’t believe people actually eat, and this overly sweet tamagoyaki (rolled egg omelette), and 4 types of maki rolls. I guess they can’t do much about the fish not being fresh, but the rice was quite awful. The type of rice itself was off, and was hard and chewy, a completely wrong texture. It was waay too sweet, the presentation wasn’t nice and just the taste altogether was really disappointing.

Places like this make me realize just how much Japanese food, especially sushi, is generally misrepresented outside of Japan. It felt like a joke.-. I do not like like to leave bad reviews, but this...

I don’t write reviews. I’ve changed my mind. I had recently been here with a friend and had had a good experience. I decided to spend my weekend meal here to enjoy their authentic food. I was my normal self, polite, smiling, thanking them for every move… They served fried garbage salmon pieces as a prank. The female waitress refused to serve it to me, bless her. The two male cooks in the kitchen were laughing as they watched me probe the bowl of fried skins and leftovers. When I asked if this was what they normally served (benefit of a doubt) the older man who shyly placed the bowl on the table without looking at me and returned hastily to the kitchen to watch my reaction, blushed, muttered something, and admitted it wasn’t the fillet they normally serve. Gee thanks. 1 star for omitting the dish from the check. The fried wantons were cheaply filled with specks of filling. It doesn’t end there. Then I got food poisoning, (which is what led me here) lord knows what they put in the food I did consume. Why? Because I was alone? Because beautiful confident women enrage you, trigger you, or have hurt you in the past? Why should a happy, loyal customer pay for it?...

It was my favorite japanese restaurant in Neukölln. Better than average quality and not overpriced. Enough portion for main dishes.

But it’s not rly perfect, when I order delivery it always takes super long.

Now again, it’s taking even longer than one hour for just preparing one sushi set menu. The restaurant is only 15mins away from here by walk btw…

Average delivery time (before being delivered) is 50 minutes. I normally order at random hours like 3pm, 9pm …

The last time ordering via Lieferando, I ordered a customized menu and they sent 3 different pieces of sushi, they sent cheaper fish instead of my selection.

You can just remove the pricy stuffs from the customizing order, no? If you don’t really care the details of each order, what’s the purpose…

Still, the food is kinda good. I probably will continue going to Tabibito but not my...