Takagi — Restaurant in Matsumoto

ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING, DISGRACEFUL, DIABOLICAL!!!! this restaurant should be closed down immediately and the owner should be ashamed of himself. For context I have a Japanese native wife and two small 1 year old children and this restaurant had COCKROACHS! COCKROACHS, crawling around. When my wife notified the staff they took way too long to notify the manager who himself had the urgency of a sloth and an attitude that couldn't careless. When he did comeback to the cockroach that was crawling along the table towards my children he then had the audacity to spray poison chemical bug killer 1m away from my child and our food. POISON!! at this point my wife and I wanted to quickly leave this horrendous so-called restaurant, as fast as we could. My wife explained to the manager that this situation was unacceptable and we should be compensated. The manager then proceeded to ignore our request sighting it's not fair on other customers!! He then offered a small handkerchief as compensation, I firmly declined the insult. And demanded we pay the cost of the meal.

Regarding the food before this shambolic display of "Customer service" I had the duck and green onion Soba which was meant to be the warm version but they didn't listen to my native wife at all and the cold version was delivered instead. i accept this mistake out of kindness as it's not a difficult thing to do but certainly a confirmation of the order should have been performed. The meal itself was poor to average for the ¥1250 you got 2 pieces of below average duck soaked in the very salt Soba sauce. The Soba was in fairness okay and evenly cut and with a soft but slightly firm texture, I will give a margin of credit for this standard achievement. My wife had the tempura with cold Soba, the portion of vegetable tempura was okay, but the batter was way too thick and not light enough and the vegetables average, again Soba as described above. We overheard that Sobayu was available however at no point was this mentioned or made available to use, this being a critical key component of any Soba meal, need I say more. We also had the local fired chicken, again the batter was too thick, flavour was okay but very much reminded me of Familymart chicken, the oil hadnt been replaced much as there were plenty of burn batter spots on the chicken again below average.

DO NOT GO HERE FOR RISK OF HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND...

Went here with a group for dinner. No customers were in the restaurant upon arriving at 5p. Left about 6p and still no customers. Perhaps it was too early. Waiter spoke in English, which was great, and very friendly. Great!

Food quality was low. Tempura was soggy and too much batter. The noodles were boiled too long as well. The other pickles and such were mediocre. They didn’t provide wet or dry napkins. For 2,000 yen for a soba and tempura set, it was not good. I’m a Japanese American, and can understand and speak Japanese. My group were all Americans.

When it was time to pay, the lady at the cashier was extremely rude and unprofessional. When I tried translating for one of the members of the group, the person in the group attempted to pay for others.

I got confused translating to her as to how many meals the person wanted to pay, and the group member kept flip flopping. I became confused which meal it was as on the receipt as it was in Japanese - I have a difficult time reading Japanese.

Then the lady became upset and started to yell in Japanese to make up my mind, asked what the hell I was doing, and to hurry up. She berated me. I didn’t say anything. Absolutely stunned.

In the Japanese culture this is considered aberrant and unacceptable behavior. If you go, be forewarned for unprofessional behavior if you’re not perfect. I feel sorry for this lady.

Overall, low food quality and service. Go elsewhere....

This is a review for the soba “cooking class.” There were 2 others in the class with me who booked the tour via a tour agency. I was charged double because I was “one person”. I paid 7,200 yen (apx $50 usd) for watching a 5 minute video (in Japanese without subtitles) and rolling some dough with little instruction from our instructor, other than an English translation pamphlet that was provided at the table. When we were done rolling the dough and cutting it into noodles, the kitchen cooked the noodles for us (we did not see or get instruction on this part of the process) and then were served the noodles in the restaurant (with no other patrons probably for good reason). I learned nothing about soba, its history, cultural Significance, etc. I could have easily you tubed this entire class. It is absurd they charged me double, despite the fact there were two others in the class (so it was not a private class). This was not clear on the website nor the description of the class in the storefront window. Biggest waste of money my entire 2 week...