M&Maison Kyoto — Restaurant in Kyoto

I think long and hard before posting the review cause this can affect someone’s livelihood but thinking back, I felt mistreated and lied to, which is not how the business should be operated.

I had the reservation for 12pm and once ordered, while waiting for the food I noticed a few red flags. First of all, one of the kitchen staff forgot about the fishes that got overcooked inside the oven. He frantically took it out and it already burnt at the edge, he still decided to serve those fishes! Next, when the front table finished eating, he came to clean the table but once he’s back to the kitchen he still leave the same gloves he wore the whole time. There’s no hand washing, gloves changing, and he was handling raw sashimi to serve to me! It doesn’t stop there, the fishes were not cut fresh to order but came from a questionable container cause the tuna tataki was so fishy, no amount of wasabi can compensate and the squid have that slimy firm on the surface, it no longer has the springy texture from fresh squid but soggy feel like old fishes. However, that’s because I was not local cause when they serve Japanese guests, they cut out fresh snapper sashimi! So what they say on the menu “fish of the day” is entirely depends on who you are! For the main dishes, I’m also another unfortunate soul who ended up with overcooked fish, which is no longer tender or moist but so tough I literally struggle with divide it with my chopstick. The star of the show is sadly the rice and the egg omelet but other than that, most lack flavour and I can’t even finish the miso soup cause it’s have a funky sour after taste and overly salty. To top it off, when I get up to pay, they charge me an extra 550yen for the sashimi (4 pieces of old fishes) when it’s supposed to be part of the combo (2,500 yen for rice, fishes of the day, 5 side dishes and sashimi of the day), if you zoom on my photo you can see it on the board outside of the restaurant! I was deeply saddened cause the reason why I chose this place was that they’re kind to foreigners but I left felt disappointed and taken advantage of!

Post review thoughts:

To be honest I felt hurt and taken aback by the restaurant response. In a sense, to say I don’t have the palette of the local hence, I can’t appreciate their “craftsmanship” feels like being gaslighted. However, I decided to take a step back and experience Japanese food everywhere else before coming back to this review, Kyoto was my first destination after all. I’m also curious to what the locals have to say about the restaurant so I went on Table log, the Japanese version of Yelp, and do a little research. For the sake of clarity, I have input these reviews in Papago and attached the translation screenshots.

I’m glad to say this was the worst experience I had in Japan! Cause every restaurant I went to after was one delight after another! I came from a family of cooks so let me share a couple of notes to why I thought the fish was overcooked and not fresh:

1. oven is not a good cooking method for fish, beef roast, yes, but not fish. Majority of cooks know oven temperature is uneven depending on the area so food may not cook evenly. Besides, fish is a delicate protein and easily get over cooked not to mention every piece of fish requires different cooking time due to thickness, fat and moisture contents. That’s why when I witnessed the chef was training the new staff of how to use the timer to cook the fish, I thought it’s a red flag. The oven was small and when they have orders back up they shoved a new tray of corn in, pushing the fish tray further back (the back of the oven is often more hot than the front) exposed the fish with intense heat. To top it off, he also forgot to set the timer so at one point he was frantically took the fish out

2. cod is a lenient fish due to its fat content (that’s why we have cod oil 🤭) so it’s not easily to be over cooked especially when it’s fresh! Some factors that can contribute to overcook is when it’s over marinated (the salt draw out the moisture), not fresh, or cooked...

Thr food is very good, but there were many small details that made this a frustrating experience for me.

They made me sit in a seat I was not comfortable with, I asked if I could sit somewhere else, but they forced me to sit in this seat that was cramped next to the register and the loud speaker. It didn’t make any sense because there were no other customers in the store, so why can’t I sit where I want to? Being told what to do when you’re a paying customer can be quite offensive to foreigners, especially when the price is so high, be careful.

To make it worse, the music was quite loud and very cheesy American pop music, it was totally different than you would hope for with such nice Japanese food, ambient or mellow music would be much better. I didn’t complain because in my experience Japanese store owners often see complaints as extremely rude or they might turn the volume down slightly, but not give much empathy to the customer. Instead I’m writing this bad review so they get the message clearly.

The price was higher than expected. I knew the base price was 2100円, which is already a lot for a breakfast in Japan, however this place is obviously more gourmet and target at tourists so I accepted it. but they asked me to choose the type of rice. I thought it was a choice required and included in the 2100円 price, I choose Onigiri which was just simple onigiri, but then at the end my bill was over 2800円! I was a little pissed that this extra fee wasn’t explained clearly to me, just for some rice that is not that different from 180円 Conbini onigiri. Its possible that I misunderstood the Japanese on the menu, but still the staff suggested I choose it so it means they want me to spend more money, it’s an old trick that we used when I worked at Starbucks, would you like a pastry with that? That’s great that the business made more money, but I feel cheated as a customer.

Overall it’s a pretty standard Kyoto vibe, amazing quality of food, but way too uptight and insensitive to its customers needs, and a price that is aimed at exploiting tourists wallets, vs...

I’d probably give it a 2-3 star. Japanese breakfast in a stylish setting with friendly but chaotic service, small portions, and good but just ordinary, expensive food. I’d say experience it with the cheapest set for the vibes and the creamy miso soup. Fyi they do incentivize people to leave reviews. So, we came in afternoon on a weekday, so we got seated and served pretty quickly. The cooks are also your servers, and they are friendly and can speak English. The food is pretty good but not special, like it’s fish rice and pickles just like you can get anywhere in Japan. The fish was seasoned well with tender flesh and crispy skin, but the other sides were so mid. Everything is pretty small in portion (like 5 little slices of pickles, a thumb sized sweet potato—both of which I would say was lacking in flavor and attention). I would not recommend the sashimi since it’s definitely not worth the money. Later, I noticed some people who came in after us had garnishes on their fish that we didn’t. I also noticed they got miso soup, but we didn’t. I had to double check that it came with our set. We got the soup after we asked about it, but by then we had already finished our meal. Because of the open kitchen, we saw the cooks talk amongst themselves about the missing soups and watched them scrape out the last of the pot for us. It was a little awkward, but the soup was creamy and probably the best thing there. We spent almost 5000 for 2 for [late] breakfasts which is way too much for the little food and subpar service we got. I thought the concept+food+dishware was weirdly similar to Brooklyn’s OKONOMI, and it’s because they share (shared?) the same owner! Kind of sad to say that okonomi is so much better; they are warm and have amazing service and food with the same...