ALEGRIA kashiwa — Restaurant in Kashiwa

If I could give 1.5 stars, I would... 1 star feels a little too harsh, but 2 is way too generous. Meat is mostly cheap cuts:- cooking cheap cuts in the way they do (which is massive skewers over a gas flame, like a BBQ) means the meat just ends up tough and chewy. Out of the various meat offerings, only the rump cut tasted ok and wasn't too chewy. All meat cuts were cooked 'rare'. To the point of only just beyond what most would consider 'blue' - if you don't like your meat pink, avoid this place. Sausages seemed to be chicken mince based sausages. My traditional British blood prefers pork, but chicken can be good... however... I know sausages should have a good ratio of fat [I make them! I know this very well!], but this fat should render down as they cook to allow the meat to be flavourful and juicy. These sausages still had remaining large chunks of fat still visible. No seasoning either. very bland and very fatty. Not good! In fact, seasoning seemed to be lacking for everything! Do these chefs not know what salt and pepper are???? Just a little seasoning would've helped elevate the meat. The only stuff that had anything on it were things with deliberate labels like "pepper steak" and "garlic pork" etc. The "herb chicken" was particularly horrible - it's like they'd taken every herb in their pantry and mixed it together and fully coated the poor chicken meat. Over powering mush of flavour on rubbery cheap chicken.

You get various veg though this BBQ method of skewered cooking too. Mushrooms, jacket potatoes, onions etc. They were ok but very greasy. The style of delivery and ordering meant you waited until stuff was brought around to get things. They would slice the meat at your table and you would take it. Later we were allowed to specify what we wanted cause they kept bringing around options we weren't interested in. Would've been nice to have had that option from the start! The salad bar was average. Usual lettuce leaves, some veggies you would normally associate with salad. Some potato abominations (cold mash potato mixed with cod roe for example). Menu online hints that there should be some fried potatoes or something... nope. The only "pasta" was just a standard salad style pasta - penne mixed with a tiny amount of grated veggies and mayo. There were also 2 meat stew type options (one tasted like Japanese curry, the other was more like a meat stew). My guess is the off cuts of meats that don't make it onto their skewers get used in these pots. I dread to think how many days these were going. Hopefully not too long! They had rice available near-by so I'm guessing that's what you're supposed to have the meat stew/curry with. There were also some dessert stuff - acai yogurt with pear, coffee jelly, orange wedges, and 6~8 flavours of ice cream. I actually forgot about the ice cream so didn't have any, but the yogurt was ok.

Although it doesn't say it anywhere- you MUST buy a drink. You can choose anything as a one-off [lowest price 300yen], but if you're going to drink at least 2 soft drinks, you may as well get the nomihodai [drink all you want] soft drink option for 600yen. I don't like this forced "table charge" type thing done in Japan. it's annoying. But for a place that you essentially do everything yourself, why do they even need to enforce this??? Specially as the staff weren't exactly amazing - weren't rude, but definitely could've been nicer/friendlier! The alcohol nomihodai is about 1500yen. pretty cheap for 2 hours so seemed a popular option for a fair few groups we saw coming in. The food is about 4500yen [for 2 hours, last orders 30min before end] but they have a voucher available pretty much the entire time which reduces the cost to 4000 [including tax]... but then they force you to buy drinks so it kinda makes this coupon pointless. The cost vs the quality of meat... not worth it. Would I go again???? This branch? Definitely not. But if I look at the reviews for other branches,...

It’s a good place for Japanese people who are “beginners” to churrasco. But this place is far away from an authentic Brazilian Churrasco. Even the entrance door starts with a msg in Spanish instead Portuguese. I thought it could be an Argentinian Churrasco but the way they served the meat was a “Brazilian wanna be” place. The Salad buffet also is far away from what you usually see in Brazilian’s Churrasco restaurants and they served things like curry and Japanese stew. The staff are cute and friendly but too young and untrained. They don’t know how to cut properly the meat and they kept spreading parts of the meat...

今回の食事体験は正直がっかりしました。 お店の案内には「閉店時間22:30・利用時間2時間・ラストオーダー22:00」とあり、普通に考えれば問題なさそうに見えます。ところが実際にはそうではありませんでした。

20:30の予約で、少し早めの20:15に入店したので、22:15までは利用できると思っていました。ところが22:05ごろセルフコーナーのアイスを取りに行こうとしたら、スタッフに止められました。会計の際にもう一度確認したところ、がたいのいい男性スタッフが出てきて「ラストオーダーにはセルフコーナーも含まれます。ただ、食べたいなら今取りに行ってもいいですよ」と説明されました。 その場でそう言われても気分は良くありませんし、そもそもルール自体が不明確です。20時以降に予約枠を開けておきながら、このような制限を設けるのは矛盾しています。利用客にとって分かりづらく混乱するだけなので、ウェブサイトや予約画面に明確に記載した方が良いと思います。

さらに会計時には次のような不備もありました。

実際は2人利用なのに、3人分で計算されていた。

1100ポイント利用したのに、最初は1000円分しか引かれていなかった。

どちらもすぐに修正していただけましたが、短時間で複数のミスが重なるとやはり不安になります。

お店の雰囲気や料理そのものは悪くなかっただけに、とても残念です。ルールの明確化と会計対応の精度向上をぜひお願いしたいです。

I was honestly disappointed with this dining experience. The restaurant states “closing at 22:30, dining time 2 hours, last order at 22:00,” but in reality it was confusing and inconsistent.

We booked at 20:30 and entered at 20:15, expecting to stay until 22:15. However, around 22:05 I was stopped by staff when trying to get ice cream from the self-service corner. At checkout, a male staff explained that the “last order also includes buffet area,” which was never clearly stated before.

In addition, there were billing mistakes: We were charged for 3 people instead of 2. Our 1100-point coupon was initially counted as only 1000 yen.

Although both were corrected immediately, multiple errors in a short time leave a bad impression. The food and atmosphere were fine, but the unclear rules and sloppy handling were...