Taro - Balham — Restaurant in London

Oh dear. I do this review with a heavy heart.

Came here prevoiusly about a month ago and the service was slow. Thought we would try again today.

Ordered food. Talked about allergies and asked for a substitution. All ok so far. Previous time we asked for extra ginger as the portion size was small. They gave us more but charged extra for it. Mentioned the need for lots of ginger with the sushi, only got one piece per Balham roll set - see photo. When made a comment, some more was brought out - was expecting to pay more for it. Allergy information was obviously not passed onto the chef as it was present on the sushi set - but my son eat it, so he was happy. My hot dish, which usually comes before the sushi sets did not turn up. We asked for clarification on the order and were told he would check. 10 minutes later an order was put in with no communication regarding status. No apologies, or explanation so order could be refined or cancelled. By this time, my family had virtually finished their meal. My food arrived and I had to eat up quickly so as to not keep them waiting.

Asked for bill to find the hot meal had been charged for at the full menu price not the lunch menu price. Had to query this as well.

Overall, as expecting to have a nice relaxed lunch, only to find I had to hurry the main part of my meal.

Getting customes in is the difficult part of the industry at the moment. Once the customer is in, you would expect some form of customer service, with good communication and a smooth customer service.

I am sorry to say, but Balham has now put me in a position of not wanting to go back any more to Taro. We love the Kennington branch as there is smooth interaction from the staff, but Balham ...

Will not be going back, as it is not cheap and would like some form of positive communication, as we know thing do go wrong at times. It is not rocket science - just talk to the customer so they are in the loop and not trying to second guess what...

(SADLY) REVISED REVIEW: REVIEW 2 (3 December 21) A the heart of it, Taro needs to decide if it is a Deliveroo takeout kitchen or a restaurant serving the actual people who make the effort to come and dine there. It's operating as the former.

We've returned, again after football training, for another meal. We've ordered almost the exact same order, but sadly, the experience is the complete opposite to our first visit. We sit at the table for 15 minutes before flagging someone down to take our order and get something to drink. When the food comes, it comes in spurts. If it were a few starting pieces, that would be fine, but this is most of one main order--but only for one of us. My son's bento box comes 15 minutes later but only after again chasing it down. One bowl of miso comes out. We share it and flag down the other. It's cold and settled (How?! It comes out of a huge pot!). A sushi order is forgotten. The accompanying rice is forgotten for the bento boxes. It's all a shambles. We wait for the bill. We ask for the bill. After 20 minutes, we get our coats on and stand at the door before it's offered to us. £59 bill discounted to £51 for our trouble. I'm not sure what was taken off as the receipt printer is long-overdue for an ink refill.

My son was so excited to go back. This is a 'treat' place after a long, long week. It's not one we'll be returning to anytime soon, if at all.

REVIEW 1 (late Sept 21) Wonderful food, especially the fish (of course), that's no-fuss and so very very friendly. My son (11) and I stopped in after football training and two absolutely massive bento boxes hit the spot. The lovely manager was so complementary about his chopstick skills he had a little blush on his cheeks. I can not...

This was an appalling meal. We were excited that a new local Japanese place had opened in Balham, and as such set out to try quite a lot from the menu. All dishes were disappointing both taste wise and presentation wise. The sashimi salad was just sashimi in a bowl with a few leaves and 1 cherry tomato cut in half but not separated, no dressing or presentation. The yaki-tori was extremely small pieces of chicken on the skewer like off cuts, and in retrospect we should have resturned the dish immediately. The sushi was tasteless and lacked presentation or appeal. The beef teriyaki was also underwhelming. We had some other dishes which were all poor, I've actually forgotten what they were. We tried both versions of the mojito and both tasted like chemical fragranced hand wipes. Service was inattentive and completely disinterested. We gave some simple polite feedback at the end of the meal and as anticipated, the staff didn't seem interested or at all surprised! To top it all, it's not a cheap restaurant. The same money could have bought us an extremely good meal in Tsunami down the road in Clapham. I can't see the restaurant lasting, locals certainly won't be returning after one experience there, unless is relies on the people popping in for a noodle dish to take home on the way from work - but there are much better options for this. This restaurant hasn't appeared on TripAdvisor yet, perhaps to avoid an onslaught of...