Watami Uptown — Restaurant in Taguig

Initial review 3 stars: The thing about this area is that they have limited air-conditioning so don't be surprised to feel multiple air drafts from all the scattered fans on the floor. Cross ordering with nearby restaurants is a plus and they have the best service here. Friendly yet professional. The food I enjoyed though I've had better. I don't think I'll come back, the place is too hectic for me.

EDITED review on a second visit: 1 star for poor service and food poisoning. Despite only 3 tables filled, service was poor mainly by this one server. While I was giving my order and he was writing it down, he suddenly shouted to another passing server instructions. I thought it was a one-off so I let it be. Then they served us free appetizers, the seaweed of which gave us bad stomachaches the next day. This same server again forgot to punch in one of our orders and didn't even apologize or advise us about it. Time for the bill, we asked to pay via gcash. There was a problem with the terminal yet he just left without saying anything. He came back with another terminal, he was still having problems. At this point, I would think he would ask if we could pay in cash instead but no, he left again without saying anything. It's been ten minutes of this back and forth, we eventually just asked to pay in cash to leave. In the middle of paying, he suddenly left again because one of the cooks was leaving and he wanted to say goodbye and fist bump. Left us hanging with the bill waiting for our change. Oh it was so bad, I now understand why this place barely has any customers despite other branches always...

Went to Watami to eat with friends. However, we didn't have a good experience.

At first we said, we're only going to look at the menu. And when we sat down, we were already served with side dishes, which sort of forced us to stay and order there.

When the food came (I ordered the Sirloin Set Menu), the sirloin was served last in the set, so I was only served with rice and miso soup (which tasted bland). The sirloin meat itself was too salty. BTW, I also ordered sashimi and that's the only good tasting food they served.

My friends ordered ramen and both the ramen bowls were not satisfactory. The karaage side was also too salty.

Service: We asked that the teapot be left on our table but the staff took it away from ours table twice. I also asked the staff if the side dishes were refillable and they said yes. But when I asked to refill the side dishes, they did not refill it. I asked to have it refilled again, but no refill happened.

We also ordered their sangria but it was never served. When we asked the server to cancel the sangria because it's taken too much time, they said that the sangria is not available. However, they did not bother telling us that the sangria isn't available. They only said sorry when we told them that they should have informed us accordingly.

When we asked for the bill, good thing we double checked the items punched because we were still being charged with the sangria! They eventually fixed it.

Hope this never...

Ate here just after the window for lunch rush so the restaurant was no longer packed with dine-in customers. Ordered one of their Teishoku sets and noticed one of the issues that we encountered during our visit: Servers and waiters on duty would avoid eye contact or would hastily look away even when I tried to call for their attention as we were going to order. After a couple of minutes, we were approached by one and proceeded to take our order.

Here's where our next issue would come in, the waiting time.

We waited for almost an hour (around 45 mins or so) before our order arrived. Mind you, we only ordered their teishoku set meals and no other side orders or dessert.

Now, here comes the third issue. The food came in cold, the katsu was not crunchy and seemed as if it had been sitting stale in their ready made batch for awhile. What made us scratch our heads was that the only item from our order that came in hot was the rice. One would think that the reason why they made us wait for 45mins was that the food was cooked and assembled during that time but it seems we were mistaken.

Bottomline is, we won't be coming back here anytime soon. There's a plethora of Japanese restaurants that offer a better quality of service, better food for the same or lower price than Watami here in Uptown. Not sure if this is the observed standard for all their branches nationwide but this experience would surely make us think twice about dining in...