CA Japanese Pancakes — Restaurant in London

Heard very good things about the food here, so I decided to try it out.

Honestly, I'm incredibly disappointed. They're obviously busy because they have packed patio furniture (painted pink) on top of each other to create more tables, despite lacking the space. They allowed 2 women to sit at a table intended for 5 people, but refused to let myself and a friend sit at a 3 person table inside, where they have real seats. (Later they tried to seat 6 people at the 5 person table; one girl was still standing at the table when I left). I put my back out a couple of months ago & it hurts to sit, and these chairs are actually agony. I wouldn't recommend coming here if you are a larger person (squeezing in between other tables was hard enough for us) or if you have mobility problems/disability.

They kept us in a queue in the street, despite having a reservation for 9 minutes because it is too small to wait inside, and when they called reservation only groups forward, most of the queue were walk-ups who pushed to the front to try and get a table anyway. Unorganised; either refuse all walk-ups or have a separate queuing system.

You have the table for 1 hour & then they make you leave, but it took them 10 minutes to start taking orders from the outside tables. The food didn't come for an additional 7 minutes, and then the staff dropped my top pancake. There was 2 women working and it was very slow, even waiting for my receipt took an unnecessary amount of time.

The food was not worth it in my view. The pancakes tasted like undercooked poached eggs, and the fruit was mushy and also tasted like they'd been poached. They only brought our drinks when we were almost finished eating & despite ordering a hot latte... they brought me a cold milkshake-esque drink, which had so little liquid under the cream that I couldn't actually get anything to come out of the straw.

What a waste of time and money. It's obviously only popular because some influencers plugged it online, not because there's anything worthwhile...

Overhype, Overprice, Good Service

Taste wise: pancake is really soft and well cooked; however, the taste was down the hill - lump of sugar found on the side of plate with one strawberry for £2.5 — overall taste was really bland and very disappointing - the only good side was the softness of the pancake.

Iced Latte was very diluted as well, I only taste the soya milk and a tiny little soul of the coffee…

price wise: The price on the menu and the end result of the price does not sum up, many of the price on the menu had been change as it does not match up with the menu. I only remember the strawberry one once I got the bills cuz it was an add-on to the menu (it was 2.5 on menu and 3 at the end) especially when it seems to me that I got one thinly cut strawberry FOR 2.5!? I did tell the waitress and she deduce it out for me as it wouldn’t seems fair so I’ll say great thanks to Lisa on this, she’s a wonderful waitress. However once I add up the price later from the menu after I got out from the shop I found out that almost all of the items price were added up compared to the menu price.

Total price was 20.76 (-.50 was deleted as she deduce the strawberry add on to the menu price for me) Ice latte 4.4 (from the bill but the menu is 3.8) Cream Brûlée pancake 11.5 (menu price I rmb, but I didn’t look at it on receipt)

Atmosphere wise: Instagramable but not that instagramable - the heater is nice and warm but with bad seating position it is scorching hot and felt like getting burnt by a scorching sun on the back/top of head

Service wise: Although lots of customer were swarming, the waitress were caring enough with good explanations on how they would have to prioritize customers with booking first due to the seatings limit. As I’ve mentioned, she was very nice about menu pricing as well. Although there are some that was not in their best service mind which may be due to how early and busy it was, the service was the best in all the aspect this place has...

I'll start off by saying that visually the soufflé pancakes looked amazing, but sadly I was not impressed with the rest.

I found the cafe to be far too overcrowded and I felt uncomfortable to as we were right on top of strangers. I had to move a table and bump into a stranger next to our table just to be seated.

Concerning the food, we decided to order two soufflé pancakes and two cappuccinos. The pancakes just weren't flavourful and tasted like we were just eating whipped egg whites that had been cooked (Mine were even slightly bitter for some reason)

I decided to try the Tokyo Miso Mochi and personally I found the toppings too sweet, to the point of feeling slightly nauseous towards the end of the meal - and ultimately I was unable to finish it as a result.

The vegetarian ice-cream and mascarpone that accompanied my pancakes were simply not enjoyable as they had an unpleasant texture and taste, it would have been much tastier if real ice-cream and mascarpone had been used as it would have balanced out the sweetness. The espresso that was meant to be poured over the pancake was also burnt and bitter.

Lastly I was disappointed with the service. We waited for over 40minutes for our food to arrive and noticed that 3 other tables had received their food before us - even though we had ordered prior to them.

Usually I don't like to post harsh reviews, and perhaps my experience was an outlier, but as it stands, I can't in good faith recommend eating here considering the quality of the food and the experience...