Sao Dou Hua Ueno — Restaurant in Tokyo

A disgrace to Taiwanese food. Ordered an iced soy dessert with boba and jellies. The boba was not fresh and very mushy, nor was it very cold. They told me boba was cooked this morning (8-10hours ago) and took out a gelatinous glob of boba from the fridge that’s been congealed. Boba loses its bouncy texture after a few hours and needs to be tossed and remade. It’s alway kept at room temp or in warmer to maintain its texture. I suspect the boba was a slow mover and has been stored in the fridge for a few days. The fried chicken was basically overcooked karagge. Not the thai basil popcorn chicken I expected from a Taiwanese restaurant. The noodles and rice dishes were mediocre. Skip the set meal, dim sum sides, soup, and almond pudding were also terrible. Service was comically bad, the gentleman was unable to offer a solution for spoiled boba. He just kept repeating the word “boba” and could not even do simple math at checkout. He was confused when I handed him a bill with coins and did not know what to do for change until i busted out a calculator and showed him what he owed. I would avoid this place...

Food is overpriced here, for 6 persons a meal and dessert with a drink, 20,000 yen. Took over an hour to get noodles set meal. I'm not sure how they decide who gets the food first, but there were people who ordered after us ate and left whilst we still waited for our food.

I'd suggest they need to reorganise themselves to ensure food is delivered fairly. We had one meal (2 of the dandan noodle) delivered whilst they give the same dish elsewhere to another table doesn't seem fair, they ordered after us.

They also do not allow unfinished food to be taken away, wastage must be high.

The dessert was good, but again...

I had the dan dan noodle without soup, scallion pancake and mango/watermelon tofu dessert. Restaurant wasn’t busy at 2pm on a weekday, and my food only took about 15 minutes to prepare. I liked everything I ordered. The “little spicy” choice on the noodles was perfect for me. Noodles were nice and chewy and just the right amount of sauce when mixed. The mango/watermelon dessert was refreshing on this hot, rainy day. I don’t always like QR code menus but this one had international language support and it was easy...