Wagyu&Seafood Niseko Naniwatei ニセコ浪花亭 — Restaurant in Kutchan

An uninspiring, unhappy, and eye wateringly overpriced experience.

To start with, on booking, they debit the full cost of the tasting menu. Without telling us. You'd better like this or else.

Secondly, that cost. Insane. Tokyo Michellin star prices.

You really had better like this.

Getting to the venue is risky in itself - down on an icy slope. Upon arrival the recptionist cheerily tells us they have at least one car accident a day outside.

Escorted over to the lift, and down we go.... to basement B2.

Was this a mistake? This is not the same as the pictures they posted on their website. An underwhelming dining room, without style, design or elegance and..... semi-open plan to the boot/ski room. Yes - really! Bizarre hearing skis clattering and boots unclicking as food is being served.

Staff are freindly, attentive and mean well - but they clearly have no fine dining experience or training which just leaves them in an awkward position as things start to go wrong.

No cocktails, but did agree to make a G&T when pushed.

Food courses start coming out thick and fast before we've hardly started to drink the G&Ts, with second course served immediately after first. We have to ask them to slow down otherwise we'll be finished in 30 minutes.

We ordered a very expensive Chateax Margaux Blanc, but the bottle is warm, and, when opened, the metallic smell and taste clearly indicates that it is corked. At this price point I would expect a trained sommelier to intercept before serving, but we enter into an extended conversation, inclding a call with their supplier who suggests the wine would be fine if we just decant it. None of the staff even smell or taste the wine - lack of training, and not acceptable. After much discussion they do agree to take it back.

We notice the wine fridges are set at the wrong temperature. Yes, the wine fridges are all untidily dotted around the dining room. We ask them to recommend a saki instead. It is indeed nice, but, later we discover that they had picked a bottle at the same price as the white wine. Saki tends to be cheaper than Bordeaux wine, so this seems quite cheeky to me.

Food ingredients are local, and of good quality... but 'simplicity' is taken too far. Bland and unimaginative. Nothing is bad per se, but neither is anything original or memorable.

The final outrage is giving feedback to staff. We are not angry or aggresive, but feel we have to make clear how let down we feel, explaining clearly, reasonably and logically the problems above. The chef/proprietor is called over, who makes clear, through translators, that he is not in any mood to accept criticism.

We walked out angry and distressed.

A deeply unpleasant end to our evening at a restaurant that seems set up to fleece gullible Chinese.

You have...

Overall, the dinner was eatable, but definitely not worth the slippery slope to get there to the restaurant. Except for the potatoes nothing stands out, the portion is kind of small, we were late due to traffics in Hirafu area, so we did call our hotel and asked them to let the restaurant know if it was okay or not, the restaurant said it was okay, but they might need to serve the dishes faster than usual, we didn’t expect that means they leave out half of the dishes in the menu on the table like some kind of Fastfood sharing way……one of us have a shorter menu than the others but instead of serving people with longer menu, this restaurant literally just served the person with the shorter menu first, which doesn’t really make any sense as that person will be having dessert while others are still on their main course……it was kind of ridiculous the way they rushed us, while at the end we actually had to wait quite a well to get the sabu sabu and wagyu steak, desserts for the longer menu…….we did manage to return the table on time so the rush was really unnecessary……the whole experience has been quite unpleasant, so for us we will not be going again……one of us is allergic to bamboo shoots which we notified the restaurant in advance but obviously they just ignored it and served it anyway, why bother to ask if there is any allergies restriction if they plan to ignore it in...

Our experience was pretty shocking- we thought it was a scam or joke- the restaurant is in the basement of hotel, no ambiance, completely empty for the whole time (which was understandable after we started diner as to why), my view were some boxes with a blanked over and cables in corner… one of the staff actually sat with earphones at the only other table that was occupied. The food was at best mediocre (except the tomato dish) and definitely didn’t represent the app $200 per person set meal price. Want to mention that the lady server did her best in friendliness, smiling and explaining each dish however the ambiance and food experience still gave us a bitter taste. A very expensive mistake/ no wonder we were the only ones. My suggestion is move the restaurant and lower prices, keep the...