Akiyoshi — Restaurant in Kanazawa

Just left this Akiyoshi in Kanazawa extremely disappointed, surprisingly at their service...not their food. We enjoyed their food and our experience at their other location in Osaka just last week.

My husband and I waited nearly an hour for seats (which we aren’t complaining since it’s common to have long wait times during peak dinner time). The couple after us only had about a 30 minute wait since they were seated only minutes after us.

After our first round of order, we were happily eating and chatting when the middle-aged server with boycut hair approached us asking us “Counter ok?”. It seemed that she wanted us to move to the counter to accommodate the group of 5 that JUST walked in and give up our table for them. I found that request odd since they did not even bother to approach the couple that were seated after us and were at the only other table that can seat 4-6. The other couple did not have any food yet and were still ordering while we had our first round of food all set out and already partially eaten.

I thought it was rude for her to interrupt our meal and expect us to move mid bite when she could easily ask the couple that were seated after us that had not yet ordered. So we turned down the request to move to the counter and the waitress gave me the dirtiest of all looks. Her venom was palpable and made it extremely uncomfortable. She also waited about 10 minutes before she decided to finally ask the other couple to move to the counter, which they easily did as they still had not yet received any food. They proceeded to take away our English menu and continued with their cold attitude and dirty looks. I did not feel comfortable staying there even though we planned to order a few rounds of food, so we quickly finished the food that we had already ordered and left without finishing our soft drinks.

I am not only disappointed at this level of treatment but also humiliated just for wanting to stay at our table that we waited almost an hour for. We just wanted to eat our food and go as we were starving after the hour wait and neither of us drink alcoholic beverages.

We left still hungry and insulted. Once again the food is decent. But the Kanazawa location needs a good lesson in customer service...

Good local atmosphere, extremely noisy (especially staff). Food ok for the price, very simple, nothing exceptional: the dip soy sauce adds everything to the yakitoris (beef meat with green onions and tender chicken were particularly dry). Service needs to be improved. We were very satisfied by seating and service for ordering when we arrived. However, once we had started to eat, we were interrupted and forcefully transferred to the counter by some very stressed out staff who also transferred her stress to us, to spare our table for other guests. The new seats were very lightly cleaned, very noisy, too close to the kitchen, with the staff shouting orders very loudly from one end to the other; there were lots of times where my hands covered up by ears... Most importantly, lots of issues with our orders, some came back as sold out, then we waited for the others that never came - we tried to ask many times, but there was some 'Lost in translation' kind of situation. Eventually, we asked the check, and we repeatedly asked for the detail of what we were paying as we knew there would be mistakes, but the person didn't understand, so we let it go and paid for some things that we didn't get. We're disappointed it all started out well. If we had stayed at our initial table, the experience would have been...

Step 1. If there is a line up outside. Go inside front door then the second door at top of stairs and put your name on the list. They will call your name when it's your turn. No name on list, no eat. Step 2. Relax and go with the flow. Step 3. Like I read in a review before going... if you keep ordering food and beer/sake, you'll have a great time. We had several (5) drinks and 8 plates of food and the price was cheap. It was a fun experience and we enjoyed the walk back to our hotel through the back streets. Would recommend to persons that don't like all the raw fish type meals usually found in Japan. This place is for the...