Halal Honolu Grande Shinsaibashi — Restaurant in Osaka

First time visiting Japan. I went to various halal and vegan restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka. Unfortunately, this place ranks the lowest among all the restaurants I visited when I came for dinner on May 10th, 2025.

Food (Cleanliness): 1 out of 5 stars

I ordered spicy fried chicken. While eating, I discovered a long strand of hair inside the minced chicken. I showed it to the male waiter, who apologized and immediately replaced the side chicken dish with a new serving. However, I felt that the cook or the manager should have personally come to apologize for the issue. It was a terrible and unpleasant experience, especially in a country like Japan, where high food hygiene standards are the norm.

Staff (Service): 1 out of 5 stars

The male staff (non-Japanese) on shift provided good customer service. He made an effort to accommodate our request to keep our bags off the floor and even apologized for the oversight by the other staff regarding the hair found in our food.

In contrast, the female staff (non-Japanese) was rude and unwelcoming. When we politely asked for an extra chair to place our bags, she quickly denied us and made excuses. We pointed out that nearby customers were all placing their bags on chairs without issue. Unfortunately, our request was dismissed with no apology, which clearly demonstrated double standards. Her work attitude and customer service skills need significant improvement.

Atmosphere: 4 out of 5 stars

To be fair, everyone else seemed to be enjoying their time, even though it was not a pleasant evening for me.

Overall: 1 out of 5 stars

I was highly disappointed but still paid the full amount for dinner. In the future, I will not be returning here for dining, nor will I recommend this place to others. I suggest the management to improve on food cleanliness, especially for Muslim customers who have traveled a long way to find a decent meal.

Hopefully this review will be taken as a constructive criticisim rather than a negative...

Do not trust the 5 star reviews here. Terrible choice for a restaurant. Coming from a tourist in Japan who wanted to have an authentic taste of Japanese cuisine.

I advise everyone to look carefully at the reviewers who gave 5 stars. Very few if any were local natives.

Service was slow. Wanted to cancel my order after waiting for quite a while, but they gave the excuse that some kitchen of theirs had shut down (some incoherent rubbish).

The atmosphere was equally bad - full of rowdy non-native customers (at least on the 2nd level I was at). Coughing without covering their mouths, burping, shouting, laughing out loudly and mind you all were adults except for one teenager in the group.

Menu system is crazy. Couldn’t find takoyaki or the Okonomiyaki on the iPad app menu. Asked the staff and turns out you had to order ramen first before you are given the option. Well that’s dumb. A customer can’t order either without getting the ramen? That’s like McDonald’s telling you that you can’t order fries without getting the whole meal. In any case, the takoyaki was sold out for the day, so had to settle for the okonomiyaki.

Food came. Non-fried chicken for my children’s ramen came in huge chunks, thick and absolutely unappetizing. Mine was spicy without richness of the broth. The Okonomiyaki was equally crap as it lacked the crunchy texture and taste was bland. I can only deduce the only people who have given 5 stars for such subpar food quality are non-locals who have never tried real authentic Japanese food before. Only the fried chicken was the better dish from our entire order and even then it’s nothing to shout about.

Price wasn’t cheap either. I will be better off going for any ramen at any restaurant and I will probably still fare better!

Good riddance, can people please have some standards and give proper reviews instead of throwing in 5 stars without any critical thinking?!

Waste of time and money to go...

Obviously, you are going to use Google Maps to get here. So, this is what you need know: After you walk down a narrow pedestrian street to get here, the (English) name of the place that is in Google Maps is not what you will find on the store front because, it is in Japanese😂 Do not despair though. Because you will find menu signs with some English; just look for the word "halal" and you will know that you are there😉 Just slide open the door to be greeted and seated. Before I ordered, I was presented with a complementary appetizer of fried chicken chunks- which were delicious😋 The lady who helped me with my order was very diligent in making sure that there was not any fish sauce in my order which I very much appreciated☺️ The spicy chicken ramen that I ended up with was just what I had been craving. And, the proverbial cherry on top (because you do not want actual 🍒) were the slivered mushrooms🍄‍🟫! They added a nice mushroomy taste and dimension of texture to the ramen that just made me really enjoy it more😋 ...Oh, there is more! She even gave me a complementary bag of house made ramen...