Fujisawa Izakaya 藤泽居酒屋@PJ Uptown — Restaurant in Petaling Jaya

For the love of Japanese food

Izakaya is defined as "a type of Japanese bar in which a variety of small, typically inexpensive, dishes and snacks are served to accompany the alcoholic drinks". Apart from sushi chains, Izakaya chains are popping up like mushrooms after the rain in Klang Valley too.

Started in Kepong, Fujisawa has expanded to PJ scene.. opening a branch in Damansara Utama (Uptown) and then another one in Starling Mall (also Uptown) so we are talking about 2 outlets in one area.

Menu is extensive.. many types of food to choose from. They even pasted a laminated menu on a straw fan - creative!

◾Tamago sushi ◾Chawanmushi with ebikko ◾Salmon don with ikura, kani stick and Tamago.. complete with miso soup ◾Udon ◾Boiled salmon soup with rice ◾grilled oysters with enoki mushrooms ◾Sashimi - butter fish (shiro maguro) and salmon sashimi set (include ikura)

I had no complaints on the quality of the food, as they were quite delicious. Compared to Starling Mall, which obviously larger and more spacious, I actually prefer the other outlet as it's located on first floor and although smaller.. cosier and more intimate dining...

My friends and I decided to grab a light dinner after having dessert at aftermeal and saw that Fujiwara Izakaya was right upstairs. The menu looked promising so we gave it a go.

The interior of the restaurant looked authentic, there was even a tv playing japanese ads from the late 90's- late 00's which added to the vibe. Seating was quite limited, but thankfully, we were there before the dinner crowd and got our table with no fuss.

The food was all pretty good, I particularly enjoyed the garlic fried rice, sea grape salad and fish head name. It seems they are famous for the skewers but we did not try that as it seemed quite pricey for the portions. Strangely, there's a small portion of sambal served with the curry rice and garlic fried rice, kind of like the type served with dried ban mee, maybe this is an attempt to localise the dishes?

The service was pretty good, each table had a little button you could ring for service and whatever requests we had were fulfilled. Overall I'm quite happy with my dining...

Decent food but terrible service; many requests to the waiters were acknowledged but never fulfilled. For instance, we ordered 2 chawanmushi at the start of our meal, yet more than an hour in, it did not arrive.

We asked the waiters to check many times, 7 times in total, each time we were told it’s on the way, however an hour later finally we were told the “order didn’t go through”. This indicated to me that they simply acknowledged our requests but never acted on it.

It was the same situation for our drink orders where we repeatedly ordered tea and water, but only 2 cups ever arrived (to our table of 5) and the remaining 3 were never served.

I understand that English is not their first language and that the restaurant was crowded, but those are not excuses for poor customer service.

UPDATE: After speaking to my friends about my experience here, I decided to change my review from 2 stars to 1 star as they experienced the same thing, which I think is...