Soul Food House — Restaurant in Tokyo

I’m finally coming around to review this place. We was here 6/11/25. First and foremost, this place is overrated! We traveled from GA to Japan and had this restaurant on our bucket list to visit and to support a BOB. It was an utterly HUGE mistake. We caught a cab from our hotel which was already expensive ($50) and arrived on time to our reservation at 8pm. Mind you I rsvp for 7:30pm. It was just 2 of us. We walked in and had to wait about 10min just to be seated (not a problem, sometimes typical). The place is small and was already packed with foreigners that looked like us (which was nice to see). My friend noticed a table to the left asking the waiter when they will take their order- red flag🚩#1. After finally getting seated we literally waited an additional 45min-1hr for our order to be taken-red flag🚩#2. The customer service was piss poor a lady at a table across from us gave us their menu to view- red flag🚩#3. Not one waiter came to serve us for nearly an 1hr. My friend asked the waiter multiple times when will he take our order and every time he ignored us. The owner came out and never acknowledged us. Several waiters just walked past us. We noticed a guy come in stay for about 30-40min and left because they took to long. After waiting over an hour my friend had to tug the waiter’s shirt to get his attention in order to take our order. He had the nerve to look surprised as if someone already took our order. After finally taking our order we waited another 30-45 min for our food-red flag🚩#4. I myself was dosing off, I was sleeping at the table. We ordered fish and grits and Mac and cheese. The Mac and cheese was gross- no seasoning at all. The grits were cold and the cat fish was served as nuggets. Like wth! The other table got a whole fish we got fish nuggets!!!! Another table was waiting just as long so the owner came out again with a guy with dreads and was apologetic to them and because it was their bday she offered free drinks to everyone on the house. Not one time did she ask how our table was doing. It’s like our table was just being ignored for no reason. We peeped game and at this point we were ready to go. The next challenge was waiting for the check, anther 30-40min wait red flag🚩#5. When the waiter finally came around he forgot our ORDER! Seriously how in the world do you forget someone’s order??? It’s like all the attention was on the bday girl. I tried complaining and told him we been here for 3hrs, was provided no service and you forgot our order. That went over his head, it’s no excuse to keep paying customers this long. Then tried to make me pay for the drink the owner said was free. I was done. The service was so bad, not one time did anyone offer us something to drink outside the “free” drink which I had no choice to take cause I was thirsty from eating the cold grits. Our little cup of water poured from the the brown tarnished jug was the only thing on our table and we didn’t even get refills- red flag🚩#6. What killed it for me was their nasty restroom! Throughout Japan literally every restroom even the subways public restrooms are clean, their restroom was disgustingly filthy- red flag🚩#7. As a BOB serving in another country I expected way more. Apparently, they brought their rachetness to Japan and thought it would pass. Maybe with some but not with us. Do not waste your time, energy, and money on this establishment. Bottom line just support the local native businesses instead. Hell McDonald’s offered us better service than this place. -1/10 across the board! Train your staff better and learn restaurant etiquette for the sake of the...

1 star is too kind. Dining here was the most horrible dining experience I’ve ever had. My group of 7 made a reservation for the Thanksgiving event at 7pm. We arrived a few minutes early and were asked to wait upstairs in the waiting room. The waiting room was lovely and has a great view of Tokyo Tower. However, we waited up there until 7:20. This was our first sign that we should’ve left. But many of us have worked in the service industry and understand that delays happen. Once we sit down (we were squeezed into too small of a table) we were promptly greeted with waters. We quickly received the first two courses, salad and soup (pumpkin soup was delicious). This was the only food we received during our entire time at this place. Other tables began receiving their main course around 8pm. My table waited and waited but nothing came. We asked the staff if they knew when our food would be coming and one of the staff members told us she had no idea (I wish this was a joke). At 8:30 I asked another staff person about our food. He informed us it was coming “right now.” Mind you, every other table has been eating their food for the last 40 minutes. It’s 8:40pm and my table still doesn’t have our food. There is another group of reservations coming at 9pm. The staff asks us if we will eat our dessert before our main course to save time as they needed us to hurry and eat so they could have the table. We declined. At this point, the situation was becoming uncomfortable and we were starving so we decided to leave. I asked the staff if they could box up our food and we would take it to go. They did not accommodate this request. Rather, their solution was to go back up to the waiting room and eat our food there. We declined because we did not want to eat in front of groups of people waiting for their 9pm reservation. We also did not was to feel rushed. During the 2 hours we sat in this restaurant without food we never received an explanation, apology, or any offer for complimentary food/drinks while we waited.

This is where the night went from bad to horribly bad. The owner finally came down as she was on a different floor preparing food. None of the staff informed her or the kitchen that we had not yet received our food. We told her we decided to leave because we were starving and had just sat there for 2 hours. We proceeded to the elevator. She and one of her employees got in the elevator with us and refused to let us leave. She blocked our exit and began pleading with us to come back and eat the food. We had to ask her many times to allow us to leave (we were feeling very unsafe and uncomfortable.) She began crying and making a scene about how upset she was that we decided to leave. We were finally able to leave after one of her staff convinced her to let us exit the elevator. Never in my life has anything like this happened during a dining experience. There were so many others things wrong with this place (too many to list). Save yourself the trouble and avoid this place...

My partner and I went to this place with high hopes, but left rather disappointed. We had an 8:00pm reservation, and got there a little early and the restaurant was slammed so we were invited by the staff to go upstairs to the lounge owned by the same people on the 9th floor. We had a drink and went back down to the restaurant when we noticed “Cash or CashApp only,” which I thought was strange since CashApp isn’t used in Japan. Also, the sign on the restaurant says they take credit cards and they definitely had credit card machines (I later overheard a staff member explaining to another customer that they have had issues with credit card processing but that it ‘should be fixed soon’). We ordered and then we waited, and waited, and waited. It took an hour and twenty minutes to get our food. We ordered the cat fish appetizer, I ordered the Nashville hot chicken, and my partner had the country fried chicken. Both the mains come with mashed potatoes and an additional side. The Catfish appetizer was freshly fried and nice and crispy but honestly didn’t taste that different than fish and chips and I felt that the batter lacked flavor (some spice would have been great). The mashed potatoes were definitely not the best I have had, and overall both my partner and I felt that the chicken in our main dishes was good, but nothing to write home about. It also took three tries to get a refill on beer. While the staff were nice, they were overwhelmed and not super attentive. The restaurant suffers from a lack of organization and proper management. I would probably go back, but I would have to really be craving some fried chicken before I would bother with the stress of trying to eat here again. I will also add that we made our reservation online a week in advance and it didn’t get confirmed until two days before… I noticed the restaurant having to turn people away while we were there because the guests thought the y made a reservation, but it was never confirmed which customers didn’t understand and then subsequently had be turned away by the restaurant. If you are really craving soul food then give this place a try if you have a lot of patience, but if you’re someone who has limited tolerance for disfunction then perhaps save your craving for the next time...