Kineya Mugimaru - Cambridge — Restaurant in Cambridge

I haven't been back to Japan for a while and I was looking forward to having some authentic Japanese food. I had beef Udon, which was ok, perhaps a little bland. I was really looking forward to eating here, so I also bought Gyoza and chicken Karaage. I was really disappointed.

Firstly you help yourself to one of the plates piled up on the side and pour some soy sauce into it (to dip the Gyoza). At the time I thought it was a little strange, but when I poured the soy sauce I thought there may have already been a little bit of water / fluid in the plate to begin with. Perhaps the plates were not washed properly, I don't know. When I tasted the gyoza with the soy sauce, the soy sauce really didn't taste right so I started to feel bit paranoid that the plate was unclean to begin with. Then I had Karaage. I thought it tasted a bit uncooked. I stupidly ate one (trying to convince myself that it was ok), but the second one looked even more raw. I took it to the till (photo attached) - the manager (?) said that it has been deep fried for 6 minutes and explained this is how this is cooked in the Japanese style. I explained that I am Japanese and I am aware how it is prepared; it just wasn't cooked. She continued to disagree, offered me another piece which I declined and I asked for a refund. She gave me a refund for the Karaage only. No apologies offered.

I really hope that people don't go to this shop thinking this is what it is like in Japan. We don't have shops like this in Japan where cleanliness of plates are questionable and concerns about food being cooked properly is not taken seriously. I can only pray that I don't get ill from eating here. I spent 20 pounds for lunch - very expensive to begin with for what you get. For that much money I thought I would at least be treated...

Came here twice in the evening both times, and i have a lot to say.

First, if nothing else, please god get better chopsticks. These were the cheapest feeling chopsticks ever, im good with chopsticks and these made it hard to eat with and were uncomfortable, and didn't break evenly. The shallow spoons are fine for rice dishes but for soup its a bit inconvenient.

There definitely is not enough staff, tables don't get cleaned often or well enough, especially large tables ive seen left for 30 minutes on both of mt visits.

The tempura is massively overpriced, skip it. The fish stick is my favourite out of the ones i tried and didn't feel too overpriced however.

As for the food itself, the meat is very cheap tasting, the chicken is juicy but on both visits there was lumps of fat and weird strings in the chicken dishes, as if the chicken was not trimmed properly/was cheap. My friends beef was quite dry and the chashu pork was a bit fatty.

The curry and the tonkotsu are both good, and the noodles are chewy. Additionally, for rice dishes there isn't enough sauce, so the meal gets bland at the end as the sauce to rice ratio is low. Also a lot of the dishes felt oily, ajd some tempura items weren't salted at all.

This place is ok, but combined with all the several problems and the high price, id much rather go somewhere else. Wagamama is better which is a joke considering its British owned, wheras Kineya is actually a Japanese chain.

The wait was also long but thats not the staffs fault, just something to note, maybe its better in the afternoons though.

I really like the decor and the ease of ordering via the screen, but I wish these issues can be fixed. For now I won't...

I was very excited to try their food here and saw on the menu they had Gyudon (beef bowl) which is a particular japanese dish I've had plenty of in my life.

FOOD I ordered: beef bowl, beef yakisoba, sweet potato tempura, pumpkin tempura, prawn tempura, squid tempura and edamame. The beef bowl and yakisoba both were served LUKEWARM. It wasn't hot or cold and the dish is supposed to be HOT. The rice in particular should be very hot so that the onsen (poached) egg which is cold can be mixed into the rice. This really ruined the meal. Secondly the beef was overcooked and dry. The beef is usually cooked in a delicious broth this was also severely lacking and missed the whole point of a Gyudon. I do not recommend this dish at all. The yakisoba on the other hand was delicious but would be better if served HOT. The tempura is really good, tastes authentic and well made. I'm yet to try their soba so I will be back to try that. Maybe it'll be better?

SERVICE They should really have someone at the door asking, "is this your first time here" and then proceeding to explain how it works. The whole system was not intuitive especially if tempura is foreign to you. It doesn't even mention that you should have your tempura with the very important tempura sauce so plenty of people didn't take it cause they didn't know. Lastly, no signs of were to put your dishes when you're done. So a simple person at the door would be massively helpful. So many restaurants have people at the door it's not that hard. The lack of a proper system in place makes it a...