Japanese Restaurant Chisou Inaseya — Restaurant in Kyoto

Worst service i have ever had in Japan: There were empty/clean tables, but kept us waited for 10mins+ even we were the only group (2 adults) waiting. We quickly decided which lunch set to order, closed our menus on table & waited quietly & tried to made eye contact with at least 3 waitresses passing around, not success until both of us almost shouted "excuse me" (kind of embarrassing for the noise/volume) Traditional Japanese set supposed to serve rice together with the main course (or even with the sashimi appetizer), but rice & pickles were served last after the rest of savoury food came for 5+ mins I asked for refill my cup of tea - every other table got a jar of hot tea so customers can easily helped themselves, but my table never had this; when i asked for refill, i asked 3 times & waited for 20+mins in total. After finishing my second cup of tea, i actually self-served by getting the jar of hot tea sitting on the adjucent empty table on my own. after we finished the whole course, each of us went to the bathroom, almost asked for the bill - my partner suddenly remembered that our dessert hasn't been served! And not surprising, all waiting staff forgot about our table, once again I felt like we were discriminated because of being foreigners, the staff were helpful and nice to other tables except us. But for a restaurant located in the center of Kyoto,( and they got English menu!) How can you avoid serving foreigners!? In general the food was okay...

The food here was delicious, well-presented, and the overall dining experience was very authentic.

Everything was great until it came time to pay the bill. We were the last table to pay, and between my husband and I, we tried four, yes four, credit cards, but according to the staff none of them were working on their machine. The staff’s English was broken so we could not understand what the problem was - we knew it wasn’t our credit cards as we had been using them without trouble all throughout Kyoto & Tokyo. Our hotel made the reservation for us and I asked them in advance if the restaurant accepts credit cards, which they said yes to. So again, we had no clue why 4 cards didn’t work, unless the staff just wanted to wrap up their last table with easy cash??

My husband had to walk to an ATM 5 minutes away while I sat in the restaurant alone. Awkward. The staff also didn’t offer anything for the inconvenience while I waited or when he got back from his ATM trip. It ended what was otherwise a very pleasant evening on a weird and kind of sour note.

Moral of the story is have enough cash here, just in case, even if they say they accept...

Thoroughly disappointed !!! We chose this restaurant because Chat GPT recommended it with a few others. We came in and only two of us were handed slippers. Three walked barefoot to table. There was no hospitality. Our server/s gave a table of five one menu. The young girl use what looked like her personal phone to take our orders. When the food came out, it was staggered. We weren’t eating as a family! Three of us ordered the same dish which came and stayed on a butane burner at the table. We turned it down because the gal left it on high. We were to drop eggs in the sauce after we ate the chicken and vegetables. There was no sauce, it had been reduced to a burnt caramel. We FINALLY got the attention of the bar tender and she took the dish back to kitchen. We waited and waited and after 20 minutes just said take the eggs off the bill. This was not a cheap dinner but the food and service did not match the price. We were only the second table in there at the time of service. I wish we would have read the reviews and not the...