Arash's Kitchen — Restaurant in Kyoto

Very worst quality foods, serving expired food items, bad smell from the foods, I will nerve recommend this worst restaurant, definitely food from this restaurant will spoil your health, don’t waste your money and spoil your health…

Please don’t go to this restaurant only by checking the google reviews, I did the same mistake, those are fake reviews created by the restaurants peoples, I never had this kind very worst quality food before

Added on 16/02/2025

Please don’t act like responding promptly for customer reviews in internet, the situation and response at your restaurant is totally different from the comment Very worst behavior, Iam not at all concern about your behavior, my only concern is about the food quality, Iam not sure whether you have a proper license from food and health department

Please don’t go to this restaurant, expired food is equal to poison, it will badly affect the health

Added on 2025/02/24

Hello By the way I came to your restaurant and returned the expired food then and there There is no response from the person who Was sitting in the cash counter, the cook came out and I handed over the expired food to him, and told him that the food expired and bad smells are coming out from the food , why should I spread false news about your shop unnecessarily??? Do you think don’t I have any work other than this ????????????

Iam having medial records, which clearly shows that food poision, let me file a complaint and share with you, Iam not going to leave as it is, it affected my health condition very badly

Restaurant owner Iam ready to speak further on this In fact Iam planning to go to consumer court to to file a case on you

Dai dai,

How boldly you are commenting in the public forum, even though you served expired food, Iam 100% sure, you are sitting some where and commenting with out knowing the ground reality in the restaurant, I didnt get proper time to look into this matter otherwise I can definitely do something,…any way there is no meaning of letting know your mistakes You are not at all going to take actions to provide quality food, please remember this way of attitude will not work In...

Running a Persian restaurant is tough. The ingredients are expensive and hard to find, and because few people even know what Persian food is, Persian restaurants rarely get consistent numbers of customers like other types of restaurants do. A common mistake we see is that instead of focusing on just a few dishes done well, they tend to have vast encyclopaedic menus offering dozens of different foods, which is exactly the trap Arash’s kitchen seems to have fallen into.

After reading the positive reviews on Google and Tripadvisor, we decided to give Arash’s kitchen a try. We went there midweek for lunch and apart from one other group the place was empty. We ordered the mirza ghasemi, joojeh kebab, koobideh kebab, ghormeh sabzi, rice, naan and one doogh.

Ok, so first, the positives. The location was relatively convenient to get to and both the joojeh kebab and naan were good. The food came out promptly and service was friendly enough.

Pretty much everything else was an utter disappointment. The rice seemed to be low-grade, sticky, unsalted indian rice, not the proper long grained aromatic Persian rice we expected. The ghormeh sabzi was too runny, too oily and lacked dried limes. The kebabs didn’t come with bbq’d tomatoes and the koobideh was bland and tasted like low-grade meat. The mirza ghasemi’s flavor profile was all wrong: no garlic and wasn’t smokey at all. The doogh was out of a bottle and too watery. At a real Persian restaurant, doogh is always made fresh to order and served in jugs.

The atmosphere of the restaurant itself was depressing. Everything from the decor to the general cleanliness of the place made us want to leave as fast as possible. Overall, I would describe the whole experience as “miserable”.

There’s one last thing that’s worth mentioning. After we left, we took another look at the reviews on Google and TripAdvisor and noticed that the owner has a habit of guilt-tripping people into removing or editing negative reviews. He seems to be doing this in Persian so non-Persian speakers don’t realise...

While visiting Japan, I was excited to find a Persian restaurant with great reviews. Being Persian myself, I love supporting Persian-owned spots, especially abroad.

The owner responded to my Google review and mentioned they were having a rough day. I genuinely appreciate the acknowledgment, but I still think it’s important to share our experience honestly. Instead of being defensive and calling a guest’s review disrespectful, it might be more constructive to reflect on the issues raised. The reality is that the restaurant was not up to basic cleanliness standards, the staff appeared unprofessional, and unfortunately, the food didn’t live up to expectations. These are areas where meaningful improvement is possible, and addressing them thoughtfully would go a lot further than dismissing a guest’s experience simply because it doesn’t align with your own.

We arrived right at their 5:00 PM OPENING time, and there were NO other customers yet. The person running the front was asleep on the chairs meant for diners and woke up as we walked in. It set an awkward tone, and unfortunately, things didn’t improve much from there.

The restaurant wasn’t clean. There was old food on the floor and while the tables had been wiped, the overall space felt neglected. In the back, the kitchen staff were loudly arguing and I didn’t see anyone wash their hands during our visit, which was pretty concerning.

The sign outside said Persian and Indian cuisine, which already felt confusing, and the food missed the mark entirely. I ordered a falafel sandwich that I managed to eat out of politeness, and the koobedeh was far from recognizable. It was greasy, flavorless, and lacked any of the care or seasoning traditional Persian dishes are known for.

I really wanted to love this place and I hope the owner and team are able to turn things around. But in its current state, I wouldn’t recommend it, especially not to anyone familiar with what real Persian food...