Japanese Don Dining KOUNOSUKE — Restaurant in Utrecht

Very cozy place, very friendly staff and a unique experience of eating don. It is recommended to book a table in advance.

Drink wise I loved that they had several Japanese tea options: sencha, houjicha and genmaicha (I chose the last one). Unfortunately for one of us who wanted to drink coke: there were no carbonated drink options at all. Water, some juices, tea, coffee, beer, sake, wine and wiskey. But no soda.

We ordered several appetizers - but we intended it more like side dishes. The gyoza came with some kind of spice and yuzu something on the side. Dipping the gyoza in those before the soy sauce gives it a unique extra flavour compared to gyoza served elsewhere. Unfortunately the tamago was more like normal omelette than tamago. The takoyaki was good. Edamame is just edamame. The tofu I didn't try.

The main is the don. They served a plate with toppings to share and the don you ordered. I chose 9: gyushigure don. To me the meat was a bit disappointing. But eating it the way they explained (both on the menu and in person) made it such a great experience. First as is. Then I tried it with almost all the toppings. Finally, about 10-20% left, I added the broth. Actually it was way too much rice for me, probably 3 times my normal portion of white ricd. But because of the broth I managed to finish the whole dish.

For dessert they had home made matcha ice cream, and I tell you: it is amazing and delicious and you should try it! I am not a huge fan of matcha and I love it. I ordered it with shiratama (mochi) which made it even better.

There was one waitress wearing a beautiful kimono. The dishes are beautifully presented as well.

We came by car and although it was hard to find a spot, it was free parking.

All in all a great experience and I can't wait to visit again to try the other don and even some sake next time! I tried quite some authentic (by that I mean actually owned by Japanese) Japanese restaurants in the Netherlands and this is the first I encounter with...

Worst dining experience ever! The service from the woman who is wearing the kimono is horrible. She served us the main menu which happened to be really boring with tasteless ingredients.. Fried chicken with no sauce on plain rice. Nothing special for Japanese standards. Then accompanied by three toppings which are just not enough to create some taste with such a boring dish. I chose for lemon and some spices.. when I wanted to use the lemon it appeared that it was used. Someone has already bitten on it. So gross and disgusting! How can they serve this to clients?! Do they just serve leftovers to new clients? I waived at the waitress, but she took so much time to come.. so I eventually went to see her behind the bar because my food was getting cold. I told her about the lemon. She has totally denied the fact that the lemon was used, and she told me that it is alright to be consumed because they just took out the seeds. I felt really intimidated. In the lemon, you could clearly see the bite of the teeth's imprint. So I guess that they just take out the seeds with their teeth! 😵 She kept insisting that there is nothing wrong with the lemon.

Even though I was very upset about the attitude of the woman behind the bar and given the fact that it was past 9pm in the evening, I didn't want to spoil my evening with my friend that I do not see that often. So I just asked for a new piece of lemon and went back to dine on what I have ordered.

The waitress never apologized or looked at me again. She was avoiding any contact with me for the rest of the evening and was addressing the service only to my friend in our table.

I have never had a service where someone is so rude, arrogant, unprofessional and dishonest, as I have experienced this evening.

This restaurant is not authentic and definitely does not represent the Japanese hospitality. Therefore, it is clearly overrated.

Negative points are: service, quality of food, hygiene, and...

We know food tastes are always subjective, but the good reviews to KOUNOSUKE confuses us because it's possibly one of the worst places we've eaten in all of The Netherlands. Following some recommendations, we ordered:

Agedashi tofu (Fried tofu in Japanese broth) The tofu was wrapped in a skin of something chewy, it didn't seem like they coated it with regular potato starch? Instead it tasted more as if someone took the easy route out and wrapped it in Vietnamese rice paper - if this helps you imagine the texture.

Dashimaki tamago (Japanese omelet) If you were expecting a soft, velvety, tasty omelet...then be prepared to be disappointed with KOUNOSUKE's definitely overcooked Japanese omelet. Top was rubbery and maybe the only saving grace was the touch of dashi.

Tonkatsu (Pork cutlet) Probably the only edible thing of the night.

Kaisen don (Seafood on a bed of rice) Now onto the biggest disappointment of our evening: KOUNOSUKE's donburi. The rice wasn't warm, didn't have even a drop of rice vinegar mixed in, and overall tasteless and bland. Seafood was alright, but we never got the scallops we were promised from the menu. Unlike most restaurants, you don't get any condiments (not even wasabi!) by default. Instead, the servers come to you with the tiniest portions of "toppings" and you can only pick 3 at a go. It's also not going to be enough for you to finish your plain rice bowl with, so they offer you a vegetable broth to drench your meal. Bad choice by the way, please don't pour the broth into your rice. For a restaurant that claims to specialize in donburi, this shocked us and we'd never left an establishment feeling sadder.

We have no idea how they're so highly rated with a bunch of 5 star reviews, cause this would have never worked...