Sumo Sam — Restaurant in Quezon City

I tried the Soft Shell Crab Tempura Donburi sold at P598 (plus 10% service charge). The order came out quickly enough despite coming in at a busy dinner hour.

Bowl includes two pieces of crab and one piece each of crab stick, eggplant, carrot, sweet potato, onion.The tempura was fairly standard and tasty enough but what was a bit surprising was that I didn't taste the tempura sauce on the tempura, but only on the rice (where you could visibly see it). This resulted in the slightly odd situation of the rice being more tasty than the tempura!

The amount of rice I also found a bit lacking for the price and the size of the bowl itself. I feel like they could put in maybe half a cup of rice more. The crab can't be that expensive, right?

As mentioned, it was a busy hour (there was a line forming outside while I was eating) and it was quite late already so the staff was understandably a little tired so I was not annoyed/mad at all that the bill was slow to come out. I also noticed some mix-up in orders with some tables including mine (was also served a bowl of ramen). Something you should be aware of if you also come in at a busy hour. Nothing to make a big fuss about as the staff was also quite apologetic about...

One of the worst meals I had so far in Manila.

The spicy tuna roll was disgustingly. No other word for that abomination. Rice was totally over cooked and the tuna had no flavour or any seasoning. They sprinkled some togarashi on top!

Chicken karaage teriyaki was sweet with little or no other flavour. At least it was crunchy.

The beef teppan bento box suppose to be beef filet but was tough and dry. Again, almost no flavour. Fried rice was spoiled. Took one bite and could smell right away that something was off. Miso soup was ok.

Prawn tempura was the only highlight, so to speak. It was crunchy a d a light butter surrounded the shrimps. Again, could have more flavour. They forget the grated daikon and ginger for the dipping sauce.

On the beverage menu they have three Japanese beer but only local beer available. Also no sparkling water available.

The table was sticky and dirty. Looks like the the table setting (sauce, plant & menu) got never removed for cleaning. There’s a crust of sticky dirt around it.

Overall, very disappointing. Will never go back to this...

This place came highly recommended by a colleague, their store location is one of the best inside gateway mall 2 but unfortunately, the hype didn’t live up to expectations. None of the dishes I tried stood out—they were just average and nothing memorable to look forward to. Service was also ordinary, nothing beyond standard.

To put it simply, it felt like a “Tokyo Tokyo” experience at ten times the price. With the highly competitive Japanese dining scene in the country, if your positioning your restaurant as a Japanese type restaurant.. it really need to stand out with signature dishes, exceptional food quality, or at least value for money. Sadly, this one missed the mark on all counts.

I don’t see myself coming back here, as the hype was the only thing it had going for it. And just a heads-up—they also add a...