GOEN Fujitaya — Restaurant in Querétaro

An executive chef's review...

Having lived, studied and worked in the restaurant industry, for many yeats in Tokyo, Taiwan, inland China, Hong Kong, USA, and Mexico, I have had the good luck to eat and cook many styles of Asian food, and to be instructed by traditional execute chefs.

I brought with me a local executive chef, from Mexico City, who now has his own seafood restaurant in Juriquilla.

I will start with the good.

The service we recieved from Sven was excellent. This young man knew his menu, made suggestions and was fluent in Spanish and English. Polite and very efficient and fast.

The decore of the lobby, was clean and elegant, with a modern Japanese style.

The restaurant is also clean, elegant, large and also reflected a modern Japanese style.

The food arived presented beautifully and with modern Japanese plates.

Now for the harsh truth...

All of the Japanese flavors are missing, I was very surprised at this and have never experienced this before, it left me confused.

Let me explain...

Dashiyaki tamago (Japanese omelette) had no flavor at all, the texture and color were correct but the main ingredient Dashi was completely absent.

The nabe, the meat was very tough with an overwhelming sweetness as well as the shiitake mushrooms still had their stems on,

this part must be cut off on dried shiitake because they are too tough to eat & digest, only on fresh ones can you leave the steams on. A Rookie mistake.

The Japanese potato salad was all wrong! This was a smooth pure with a little spice... It was missing Cucumber, carrot, ham, egg, kewpie mayo...and rice vinegar.

The Tonkatsu which is fried pork cutlet with Panko breading was a complete failure.

The pork steak was very thick and cut into 4 huge pieces, remember there are no knives on the table only chopsticks, and because it was soo thick they had to use a French technique called Sous vide...

This technique is a slow and low temp cooking technique, but for this dish the texture is very wrong and the fact the breading was not Panko but an egg batter with too much egg, all wrong.

but the WORST FRAUD on this plate, the traditional Chinese HOT Mustard which is key to this dish... They used, HEINZ HAMBURGER MUSTARD!!!

this fake move on the Chefs part is like putting Ketchup on a taco al pastor and tell the customer it is Mexican salsa made with chili arbol... A PURE LIE...

The BIGGEST FRAUD, was the chirashi sushi, the fish they used and this was confirmed by my executive chef companion, was the scraps from the belly of the fish and they were severely bruised... Using only 2 types of fish.

Traditionally you have 5 to 7 medium sashimi slices of fish, such as salmon, tuna, scallop, shrimp, octopus, red snapper, and egg or ell.

This dish had tinny cubes of tuna , and salmon all bruised belly pieces.

THIS IS TOTALLY A FRAUD AND UNACCEPTABLE.

the chefs would never be allowed to present this FRAUD in Asia much less in Japan.

To add insult to injury the executive chef was there according to the staff.

When executive chef's like us see this blatant disrespect to recipes, quality and execution it can mean a few things.

Friction with ownership and/or kitchen training/politics in the kitchen are bad.

The executive chefs not being properly trained.

The executive chefs not able to train their staff.

No supervision on flavor or preparation of dishes as they go out. No one is tasting anything to make sure it is correct.

Does not care any more.

OR THE WORST SITUATION and I have seen this a lot in Asia... THE CHEFS feel the Mexican public is too ignorant to know the correct flavors so why should they try.

THIS ENTIRE KITCHEN SHOULD BE CLOSED AND RETRAINED.

Let me state I am not angry writing this, more shocked and stunned. The lack of pride, in a kitchen sending this food out is beyond understanding for me.

To the executive chefs...

Get your kitchen, staff and flavors in order or do the honorable thing and resign.

You should be ashamed of how you are representing...

We had dinner and breakfast here and they were very different.

Breakfast buffet - lots of choices, but some items were inedible! Tempura was undercooked and I couldn’t even bite the carrots or potatoes - awful!! The good items: noodles, cheesecake, juices. Salmon is too salty, tasted old. The rest of it was very average. For the price and hotel, you’d expect better quality. I’ve had better karaage at Family Mart and 7-11!

Dinner - we ordered ramen, gyoza, sushi roll, and the brioche con helado vainilla. All of them were very good, especially dessert! Above average food and nice atmosphere.

Overall, the atmosphere is nice and the servers are efficient, but not friendly. Average service, very bad breakfast, and good dinner. It’s a shame the atmosphere and food quality is really inconsistent!! I do not recommend breakfast AT ALL!...

I stayed at the FUJITAYA Hotel last night and GOEN was such a great surprise. The food was spectacularly executed and absolutely delicious. The servers were exceptionally well-trained and knowledgeable, and it was clear the culinary team has a real passion for their craft.

I sat at the bar and enjoyed the sushi omakase for $80 — worth every penny. Pablo, who oversees Marketing and PR, was on the floor engaging with guests, sharing their vision for creating an authentic Japanese culinary experience while maintaining the highest sustainability standards and incorporating local products and ingredients.

I travel often, and there are plenty of misses out there — but GOEN and the FUJITAYA Hotel were truly top notch. I look forward to...