Ginza IWA — Restaurant in Tokyo

I had one of the worst dining experiences of my life here a few days ago. We reserved for lunch well in advance and was really looking forward to the experience here. My spouse recommended it and it was her second time here. Firstly, the fish definitely lived up to our expectations. It was expertly sourced, fresh, and tasted great at points. From there it went all downhill.

The meal began and they served us with ginger aged honey as a pallet cleanser as well as a seaweed salad. Both unremarkable. From then, the chef kept on kissing his teeth and cursing under his breath because he couldn't find things during his prep or he made a slight mistake? He seemed very disorganized even though all the fish was pre-sliced prior to us even sitting down. The chef was very flustered trying to balance serving a dinner omakase for one guy and lunch sushi for the other 4 guests. The timing and order of him making the dishes really seemed off. The guy having the dinner service seemed to be waiting a long time between each dish while the chef was moulding the nigiri for us and vice versa. The chef forgot to give the dinner service guy soya sauce. The chef didn't even tell the guy what he was eating when he served him. The guy had to ask the chef for the soy sauce and for a word or two on what he was eating. I truly felt bad for the guy but I blame it on the restaurant for allowing differing menu sets if the chef can't handle the complexity and logistics.

Now onto the nigiri. The fish as I stated before was fantastic. It was a complete shame that everything was presliced and sitting out for who knows how long. The chef was very heavy handed with the soy sauce brush and everything came very salty. The eel was drenched in sauce. The baby shrimp was doused in lime and extremely sour, I immediately had to wash it down with tea after eating it. The chef noticed this and asked if it was okay, I said very sour. The chef just moved on. The chef does not deserve to be serving guests at this price point. They need to put him back into training or start charging less to customers who are served by him.

To confirm another reviewer's post, yes, this chef does take his sous chefs/assistants into the back to beat them if they didn't do something to his liking. The assistant brought out the mixed tuna for the handroll and the chef looked at it and immediately went back to lay into the assistant. You could hear the scolding and the beating happening. You can also hear the sobbing from the assistant. I'm not sure if this is just customary or its expected for a place like this so it didn't bother me too too much. It didn't make my spouse extremely uncomfortable though. I just sat there wondering why no one took the chef himself to beat him into being a better one.

After being served the handroll, we sat there for a good 5 to 10 minutes and the chef kind of looked at us and said sushi service is done. That was sort of it. They then gave us two grapes each and the bill. The grapes were probably the best I've ever eaten though. Too bad the grapes weren't worth the 18,000 yen price tag.

Suggestions for the restaurant: Fix your chef or get rid of him If your chef stays, charge less and set expectations with your diners Get sound proof walls and doors instead of two pieces of cloth so your guests don't hear you trying to solve your incompetencies

Also, the chef was going on and on about how bad Saito is. The chef kept bad mouthing Saito saying that their Uni is cheap. Saito Hong Kong gets their Uni from Taiwan. The chefs are too young to be skilled and they charge too much for the cheap fish that...

We got reservations at the first time slot which I believe was 6pm. We walked into a small, clean area with a wooden bar where we were seated.

The first red flag -- there was no one else there. We were the only two people in the place the time we were there, which would have been for the entire first time slot.

We tried to chat with the person who showed us to our seats as well as with the chef, but immediately it was obvious that this place is not at all foreigner friendly (despite what other reviews say) and the sushi chef as well as his sous-chef were not fluent enough to hold even basic conversation.

They had a book of fish in English laid out for us, and would silently open the book to the page of the fish we were eating. There was no music playing, and the chefs were completely silent and not even being playful through gestures or interacting with us. It was actually crazy reading reviews after for this place and feeling gaslit about the chef being fun and the place being foreigner friendly. The ambiance was kinda terrible and awkward.

The food came out in huge servings. Early on, we got large pieces of squid which, while fairly yummy, were huge and oily and heavy, and I couldn't finish it. This meant that halfway into the meal, I really couldn't eat anything anymore and asked him to stop. I asked for less rice, and he couldn't even understand that, which really goes to show how not foreigner friendly this place was.

What's embarrassing for them is that while we got to try a lot of interesting fish we've never tasted before, we'd look in the book for the type of fish we were eating, and it would be labelled 'inexpensive' and it wouldn't even taste very good.

We also felt super rushed the entire time. Almost always, several plates would be out in front of us at the same time, making us feel like we had to keep eating with no breaks. Usually, omakase places will pace the fish they put in front of you, but we were getting several courses all at once, one after another, before we even finished eating. I think we were out of there in 30 minutes when it should have been a 1 hour 30 minute experience.

BE WARNED, the rice was super vinegared and I couldn't even taste the fish in multiple courses. It might be a taste thing, but we've been to dozens of omakases both in Japan and in America, and I've never had rice so heavily vinegared, not even close.

The price tag of this place is also really really high. ($300pp). And for what we got, I walked out of that place thinking we must have gotten scammed, and that this couldn't possibly be a real place with real positive reviews and real pricing. The whole thing felt so oddly antagonistic. We were in disbelief when we looked at the yelp reviews after.

Really couldn't have had a worse time and at such a high price tag too. I've had way better sushi in Japan just standing up at some revolving sushi place. If you're thinking about this place because some reddit reviews say it's an easy place to book that's also quite good, please think again after reading this review. That's how we got fooled, and I really only post reviews to help others learn...

I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but I wouldn't go here again. For background; I'm from the USA, I like your usual decent USA sushi (think $2-3 per piece, and/or $12-$20 for a fancy roll), saw Jiro Dreams of Sushi and wondered if there was a next level sushi I was missing out on. I decided to try for a michelin star sushi restaurant while in tokyo. The one a colleague recommended, Sushi Kanesaka, didn't have any open slots; the hotel recommended this one so I went for it. I thought the price would be about 30000 yen per person (about $300) - for two of us. I never really got a quote of the price up front until the bill came; it was around 64000 yen ($640); so currently the basic price for a set dinner is $320; we did not order anything extra. Not sure if it is normal but neither the hotel or the restaurant said what the price would be until after the fact. While I did get to try one or two things that were novel for me (Squid! That tastes good and isn't extremely chewy!) I was left wondering what I thought could possibly have been worth that price. We probably had about 10 pieces of sushi each; I will note the counter was occupied by other non-japanese; I don't think it's inherently bad if a place caters to tourists, but I have no basis for comparison. I don't really care to explore further though! Note, the experience was probably further negatively impacted by the other people there seeming mostly interested in getting drunk. I do want to stress everyone was nice, and certainly the sushi was good, I just don't think I can tell the difference between $3...