Hakata Hanamidori Hakata Station store — Restaurant in Fukuoka

Reservation was made through Google with ease, do note that it was quite difficult to place restaurant booking in Japan. Therefore, it was great to be able to make a reservation without the hassle of placing a deposit or to have a Japanese name in order to make the reservation. However, the restaurant did not accept online changes, therefore, we had to get our hotel staff to make the change in timing on our behalf.

There was a staff who could speak English, so it was quite easy to place our order. Everyone was expected to order at least a main course.

The restaurant was well designed, looked classy. We could also hang our coat or jacket by the side. There was an English menu provided. We ordered the set which cost 47,000 Yen and the horse sashimi. The set came with some side dishes (you could see the attached photos) and hotpot with rice. The food was great!!! The soup was not oily at all, and the chicken meat was delicious! I liked the sauce that was added to the soup to enhance the taste. The chicken meat was very tender. The chicken ball was flavourful. The staff would put the ingredients in the hotpot and also help to distribute out the food, there was an instruction on what to do during the meal. In short, it was a excellent experience to dine in this restaurant. This restaurant would be my “must visit” restaurant whenever I am in Fukuoka. Missing the food already!...

That was my mother birthday dinner and we thought we could treat her something nice but the service there was terrible. We sat in a private room, the server seldom came in to check on us. When it came to the last, the server asked if we wanted rice or noodles, we answered noodle. Then we waited more than 30 minutes, the noodles still wasn't served. We clearly heard the servers were cleaning up the tables of the other 2 rooms, my mother started wondering if we were being forgotten. At first I tried to comfort her saying it's japanese culture, they tended to do one thing at a time. But then after 30 minutes, we had no choice but to o ring the bell and asked about it because the soup had all dried up. The same server came in and she looked like she had no idea what was going on, she thought we were trying to order another set of noodles. So she checked another server and we waited 15 minutes more, she came back in with a set of noodles, putting them in the dried up soup. Not only it looked terrible, it tasted bad enough. And when we checked out, the server gave us a wrong check with something we never ordered. To be honest, I will never visit again and won't...

I was told that this is a popular restaurant in Fukuoka… But it turned out that this is an overrated place.

From the interior of the restaurant, one could tell that this is a place targeted for tourists or business meetings. A few of the waiters / waitresses who served my table showed a sign of tiredness, probably from the repeated questions about the menu they received from tourists like myself. It was a rare sight though, as I didn’t encounter any similar servicing behaviour in other restaurants in Fukuoka during my trip.

In terms of food, I was quite disappointed. While I appreciate their signature chicken-based hot pot soup contained no MSG, it was so light in flavour that I would describe it as almost tasteless. I was expecting more flavours to derive from the soup but I got nothing.

For a hotpot restaurant, this is a pretty poor...