Sushi Matsumoto Kyoto — Restaurant in Kyoto

TLDR; DO NOT EAT HERE. This place is the Fyre festival of sushi restaurants. This meal made me wish I’d lost my sense of taste and smell to COVID. I need to pray at Fushimi Inari Taisha so as not to be haunted by the ghosts of those poor fish. This place should be reported to The Hague for defiling those fish corpses. In a blind taste test, cat food would win. At least if you burned your money instead, it would provide a fleeting moment of warmth and comfort.

The Tea: In alI seriousness, like many others, I found and made a reservation at Sushi Matsumoto Kyoto through Tabelog. I want to be very clear I dined at Sushi Matsumoto Kyoto and not Sushi Matsumoto as there is definitely confusion between the two online. I by chance checked the Google reviews the day before our reservation and was surprised that they were scathing, and unfortunately, all too accurate. If only I had check more than 24 hours in advanced I could have cancelled and gotten some money back.

I am genuinely confused how this establishment is still in business. Maybe they give tourists/foreigners a different experience than locals and other Japanese, or perhaps they manipulate the reviews somehow, but for what I paid, (¥17500 per person for two for the omakase) this can really only be described as a scam, and I got suckered.

First, we were brought into a private booth and not given counter seats, which to be fair, I didn’t request, but had assumed we would have received as watching your food be made and interacting with the chef seems integral to the omakase experience. This later turned out to be fortuitous as I couldn’t have handled pretending to like the food under the chef’s watchful eye. I’m still contemplating if this was actually done on purpose for that exact reason.

Second, the service was just sloppy. I have legitimately gotten better service at fast food restaurants, and I’m not counting Chic-Fil-A or In-N-Out (Michelin Star joints in comparison). The wait staff seemed confused and ill-prepared the whole time. The operation was just amateurish. Something as simple as getting water refilled was only done upon our request. I really do not wish to critique the wait staff as they are usually underpaid and underappreciated (at least in the US) , but I felt like only one waiter was even trying to be friendly and make the meal a pleasant experience.

Last and most importantly, the food is just bad. All 5 of my senses were offended over the course of the meal. The texture ranged from rubbery, to tough, to slimy and everything in between. The smell at times made me question if the fish was safe to consume. The sight made me feel like a child poking at vegetables. The sound of the silent cries of the fish souls screaming for bloody revenge was deafening (all right 4 senses, whatever). And obviously, none of it tasted good. There were small, brief, infrequent moments of pleasure, but overall, I found myself praying for the experience to end as I couldn’t bring myself to walk out for reasons I don’t quite understand. Not wanting to be rude to a chef who scammed me out of $200+ I guess or a misplaced hope that it would improve.

All in all, I hope I’ve managed to dissuade at least one potential customer from eating here. This whole review is me trying to find some catharsis from having gotten got so badly. I’m pissed at myself for blindly trusting Tabelog and not doing more research and fumbling my girlfriend’s birthday dinner. I am trying to post a review on Tabelog as well to hopefully increase visibility by even a fraction. There is so much good food in Japan and in Kyoto that I hope no one else has to waste their time, money, and a meal here. Happy munching at literally anywhere else.

PS: I apologize for not uploading photos of the meal, but I didn’t take pictures because I don’t want to remember this. Also, for real, the teriyaki chicken filet sandwich at Japanese McDonalds is a better...

SCAM -- NEVER EVER EAT HERE!!!!!!

I wish I could give this establishment 0 stars. DO NOT TRUST OTHER HIGH REVIEWS.

We were originally confused, thinking that we had booked Sushi Matsumoto in Gion -- I guess another reviewer had a similar experience -- but we had wanted to make a last minute reservation for dinner and followed the high Google and Tablelog reviews, so didn't have time to research fully... a very sad mistake...

Me and my partner are sushi lovers and are pretty adventurous eaters, so this isn't a situation of -- "well it was my first time having eel and it wasn't very good..." The food here was genuinely terrible, besides some decent uni, the chawanmushi and miso soup were inedible at best. The most deeply confusing thing was their take on "tamago," which in this case was sort of like a jiggly rectangular flan? Literally dumbfounding, fall on a ground no-words EMBARRASSING BAD--not at all like a genuine tamago should be.

When we arrived, the bar was completely open, but we were instead lead to a tiny room. We tried to order multiple types of sake from the menu -- all sold out -- then we trying to order whiskey -- also sold out.

Each time we finished a dish the waiters would peep in through the door to see if we were done and loudly knocked each time before entering. Of course, this would be fine if it amounted to pure politeness, but the result was the feeling of constant surveillance and knocking for the entirety of the meal.

If the quality of the food and the "ambience" were not enough to merit a terrible review, I received the bill, which felt like a true slap in the face ($80/person before drinks), which was rushed to us before dessert, which felt uncharacteristic for most meals, but especially unusual in contrast our other dining experiences in Japan.

This experience–while comical at times–was HORRENDOUS, and honestly upsetting. DO NOT come here, it was a disaster and the fact that this place is masquerading as a 1 Michelin-star restaurant is...

Warning: this is NOT the Michelin 1 star shop by the same name in Gion. This shop is located near JR Kyoto.

FOOD 3 Ordered the ¥18,000 course for two. The appetizers, small dishes, and sushi itself were decent, but not spectacular. Edomae style served with warm rice. Soup portion was so small, about 100ml or so. Sake is overpriced per 180ml carafe.

SERVICE 2 Sushi chefs were professional, but the service staff were so clumsy サービススタッフは本当にどんくさい and not professional. After the server delivered my appetizer (1st photo), the head chef noticed that it only had one shell instead of two like everyone else. Before I could start eating, he quickly grabbed my plate, apologized, and sent it back to the kitchen to add one more shell. The servers didn’t notice this mistake. They also spilled sake and haphazardly removed dishes and misplaced sake cups clumsily. They need to improve.

ATMOSPHERE 2 When we walked in, we heard loud voices coming from the private room like people were yelling at each other. The noise was unsettling, and I wondered what kind of clientele were they entertaining? Gangsters and troublemakers? Inappropriate behavior. Also, the guests were a much younger crowd which surprised me.

OVERALL 2 My total bill was much more than I expected. Poor cost performance for me. The only saving grace is that we met a lovely, sweet couple from Barcelona on their honeymoon. They were...