Sampota Cafe Nombiriya — Restaurant in Tokyo

Unfortunately, I had a bad experience at this restaurant that changed my mood for the day on my visit to Yanaka. This was over a month ago, and I keep coming back to this restaurant being one of the more negative experiences I’ve had in Japan. So I feel the need to share my experience. It stands out as one of the worst customer service experiences I’ve had in Japan. With so many welcoming service experiences, there really is no reason to support someone who treats their customers the way the owner of this one does. I was excited to come here after seeing the reviews and photos of a cute, quaint, retro cafe tucked away in Yanaka. The restaurant itself was cute. The menu offerings weren’t the most appealing to me overall, but I tried their speciality-the squid ink omurice. It wasn’t bad, but also quite mild in flavor and not a real reason to come here. We have moderate Japanese language proficiency, but this man still had no patience whatsoever, and used impolite Japanese when speaking to us. He also yelled-literally yelled, at one of us because of how we took our shoes off to step into the slippers to use the bathroom (foot touching the floor briefly before going into the slipper). We were trying our absolute best to be culturally respectful and to speak Japanese and were met with non-stop poor attitude. I will say the woman, waitress was friendly and had the owner not been there, the experience might have been different. I don’t want to support someone who treats their customers that way. It’s...

We were on a family trip and have been greeted with nothing less than kindness and excellent service throughout our time in Japan. We sought out this establishment and made the effort to trek to this neighborhood specifically because we heard amazing things about their omurice. However, we were extremely disappointed by the service. Like past reviews have said, we were greeted by a man who was cold and impatient. We were respectful and used what Japanese we knew, but he showed us no patience and was shockingly rude. Because we could not read Japanese, we needed to translate the menu before ordering, and we thought that was understandable. That didn't appear to be the case. He demonstrated a completely different attitude towards the locals. After all of the effort we went through to come to this restaurant, we were off-put and disappointed. Would not recommend...

We stumbled upon this place while staying in Yanaka and I’m so glad we did, it was one of our favorite meals in Japan! We didn’t have a reservation, but they still accommodated seats for two. The English on the menu is limited, but it didn’t matter because everything we ordered was amazing. Fried sardines with tapenade were one of our favorites, so many surprising and through full dishes. The sake and wine selection was also amazing and the co-owner shared so much of her knowledge in Japanese wines and sakes and curated a beautiful list of drinks. She also makes ginger ale in house that I loved :) Do not leave without ordering the fried sesame balls for dessert!! I hope we can come...