Sagano — Restaurant in Geneva

A very puzzling experience. I remember going to Sagano a few years ago both for dinner and for lunch and never had any particular issues. But now we wanted to go there for dinner particularly for the teppanyaki. We had booked in advance and once we've arrived, we were seated by the teppanyaki area with only 1 other table occupied. 2 men were waiting for their respective takeaway orders. 10 minutes later and... nothing, other than us seeing the man cooking some teppanyaki when we arrived and then leaving a piece of chicken on the grill, that was it. No indication as to how long we'd need to wait, not even the menu in hand, no questions around drinks, nothing. We were just... sitting, puzzled, and hungry. At some point the teppanyaki man came back to move around the chicken bit, moved his spatula and then left again. After over 15 minutes of waiting (mind you, we were a party of 5) and absolutely nothing, we decided to leave because... well... nothing happened. When we told the floor manager we were leaving he told us to wait, and we said we were with a child and it was just too long, and he just said "ok" in a very uninterested way. Not sure about staffing but surely for a Friday evening you would make sure it is not that bad and considering it was not even crowded... I guess we will not be coming...

A sad excuse for a pan Japanese/teppanyaki restaurant, this place does it all badly: dodgy nigiri (provenance “straight from Japan” highly doubtful), smelly teppan dishes (you won’t get the smell in the attached 📷, but you’ll see it’s not very appealing visually), sad everything else. Don’t let my other pictures fool you: except for the tofu dish, all of our food was barely average at best.

The hostess and head teppan chef are very friendly, but the other members of staff, mostly Chinese, are uncouth, unfriendly and uninterested. More egregiously, in a 80% empty restaurant, the service was appallingly slow.

We caught a glimpse of the street-side supply room and kitchen upon entering for an early dinner and weren’t impressed with the lack of cleanliness. The teppan isn’t properly ventilated either so you’ll leave smelling like what you ate.

Though the basement floor tatami rooms seem to attract a pretty loyal Japanese crowd (UN agencies, Japan Tobacco International?), this place was plain awful and a never again...

Nothing special about the decor or the service, but nothing to complain about. However, the food is quite overpriced and simply not good. The sushi is bland with rice that is not up to standard. Even the salmon was a bit watery and lacking in flavour. The tempura lacks crunch. The chirashi sushi is not a real chirashi sushi: just the fish ingredients of a sushi set laid on top of some mediocre rice with wasabi and ginger of all things. The unagi (eel) is poorly seasoned and on uninspiring rice. Geneva does not have many good Japanese restaurants, but there are certainly better choices than this one - both in terms of quality and authenticity. No reason to visit. I would note that I have eaten Japanese food in Japan and in many countries and am quite familiar with how good Japanese...