Imahan Annex — Restaurant in Tokyo

Sukiyaki is one of the more traditional dishes that can be traced back to the Edo period. Being one of the countries in the world that has the most amount of scrumptious dishes, Sukiyaki is no exception.

The main item in this particular dish is Wagyu, and this restuarant does well in giving you not only high quality Wagyu with large portions that feed you well, they also have friendly staff that are helpful and are able to assist you in preparation of your own meal. In particular, the staff will demonstrate how exactly to cook our Wagyu in Sukiyaki Sauce. It is not as easy as one thinks. You have to pour just the right amount of sauce on the pan or else it will either be too sweet or the Wagyu will stick to the pan. The Wagyu must also be cooked in the right amount of time for us to experience the perfect ratio and flavour of the fat and the meat itself.

But enough with the dish itself. The resturant here does an amazing job in the sense that their staff are very helpful to you, even if you are a foreigner. While I do not know exactly the quality of the Wagyu they gave us, I can assure you, its fantastic. You would not regret queueing up here for an hour like me in order to taste the perfectly cooked Wagyu melting in your mouth as you savour its flavour. The prices are relatively high for your average tourists but the money is worth the taste. The portions may seem small at first but Wagyu is in fact quite filling. You can be sure that you would be stuffed once you finish the vegetables as well.

Another point to add here is that this is in fact the branch of a main store just across a few streets. While the main store requires booking in advance, this store does not. Or at least did not when we arrived there.

Sukiyaki mostly does not go wrong lest something catastrophic happened. However this restaurant exceeds its competitors with its atmosphere, as well as its Wagyu quality...

DO NOT GO HERE. They refuse non-Japanese.

I have been going here for 10 years, more than 8 times, and we also had our 20 person company bonenkai here. I will never go here again.

Today my Japanese colleague called, trying to make a reservation for a business dinner for me and when they mentioned my name and the fact that a non-Japanese is attending (even though I'm also attending with a Japanese native) they refused the reservation.

To quote my colleague:

"It is horrible to let you know this... I was super annoyed what this receptionist person mentioned. Basically, because you are not a Japanese person they are not taking reservation... I told him that you are with Japanese person but he did not listen to me at all.

He said that non Japanese person does not understand Japanese things(I am not sure what he means...) and also he has problem with their old customers because they can not get reservation..."

So they do not want new customer business and they are racist if you have a non-Japanese sounding name.

Please do not go here, there are many great restaurants and shabu shabu restaurants around. There is even Imahan Honten which is run by a different company...

We first visited this restaurant 15 years ago when it was still a high quality establishment and we decided to give it another try today.

We started queueing up at 10:45am and there were around 20 people ahead of us. At 11am, they started letting people in and then shut the gates after about 15 people went inside. No attempt was made by the staff to let people know that it was already full despite the fact that there were still many people queueing behind us. At some point, one of the staff came out to tell people (only at the front of the queue) to come back at 4:30pm! No consideration was given for the other customers who were still queueing and had no clue they were waiting in vain.

There are countless other restaurants in and around the Tokyo area that serve amazing quality beef sukiyaki and shabu shabu at a reasonable price, without the arrogance and poor attitude of Imahan. Strongly recommend giving...