YAKINIKU WASHINO SHINJUKU — Restaurant in Tokyo

A little difficult to find off google maps. When you enter, the place is playing some nice jazz music. They asked if we had a reservation, which unfortunately we didn’t. We had found the place off Google and went to it from the amount of good reviews it had. They were fortunately able to seat us right away. They sat us in the back, which felt a bit more secluded than the areas in the front. It was cozy but we were unable to hear the music. Joohyun was our server and she was excellent. She also spoke English so we weren’t stumbling over our limited Japanese. She gave a few recommendations, which we ended up going with her main one, which was a fantastic choice. We had one of the course menus which takes time as they space it out for your enjoyment and digestion. Each item on the course was amazing, until we came to the cold noodle dish. It was the only one that didn’t have much flavor and we could have done without. They ran out of the peach sorbet, but that got us to try the cacao chocolate frozen dessert, which was delicious, paired with some hot green tea. It was the perfect end to a lovely meal. Joohyun walked us out as well. We will be back if we make it out this way again. Knocked a star from the noodle dish and having a family next to us that was arguing majority of the time...

This is a small, quaint restaurant serving 3 different categories of beef (premium, Kobe, and Wagyu). I went here with my family and there were 8 of us. They were extremely accommodating. However, beware as you’ll need reservations. Your tab will also be separate of group of 4 max per tab. English is spoken fairly here; however, there was one gentleman who spoke exceptional English that it almost seemed as though he may have studied in the States to be at the level he was.

Overall the food and service was exceptional and I have this on the list to come back to when I visit Japan again. It’s an interesting food style as you’ll cook your own meat and it seemed to have a Japanese-Korean fusion.

Half of our table did the 8-course meal. It was a lot. I recommend this course only if you can eat… and I mean EAT. I was beat by course 4. The other half did a la carte and you still get the same quality of food...

Trang provided professional service with a British accent, thoroughly introducing all the dishes. The food was decent, with two set menu options priced at ¥15,000 and ¥18,000, which felt a bit expensive. However, our experience was disappointing. We had a reservation at 6:45 PM but arrived early. Despite this, we were told during dessert that our time was up and we needed to leave. Trang managed to secure an extra 5 minutes, but we were still rushed out, even though everyone’s desserts were unfinished. This left us with a very negative impression. Additionally, there was no prior notice about the dining time limit, which was shocking and confusing. Overall, the service attitude was far from satisfactory, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Additionally, the five-star Google reviews were coerced, as everyone was required to write a review on their phones before eating dessert, so they don’t reflect...