Kemuri Tatsu-Ya — Restaurant in Austin

I have cooked in Austin for 7 years and tipped 20% which for me is how much I would tip if I had the worst food and service ever.. which me and my wife did. This place used to attract talent when it opened and that was apparent by the exotic and interesting menu that had good food despite the weird approach to the flavours they are selling. The energy was fun and the tiny open kitchen was so full of cooks and chefs working in harmony you could barely see the tiny kitchen around them. Now you walk in and see three unhappy people in the kitchen with servers who are visibly unhappy. The one person who provided us with a modicum of hospitality was the gentleman missing a tooth who poured our water and led us to our seats at the chefs table. The menu used to have a rating for each dish this was a fun way to prepare guests for what they are ordering. Now the menu is boring and badly adapted to the lull in businesses. The exotic variety of fish is just no longer there, with early menu items now substituting cheap frozen fish from an Asian market rather than fresh fish that is available from reputable distributors. For example, I ordered the octopus, which I did not realize was a raw dish, when it came out it resembled the marinated raw jellyfish from kemuri's opening menu in it's marinade, but the cheap raw octopus from mt market was not fresh and not worth finishing even though a small portion was expensive. For the prices per plate, I don't care how slow your restaurant is, this is just taking advantage of the guest and ruining your brands reputation. The hot pocket tasted like open faced grilled cheese with all the cheese burnt. Not bad but not good or memorable or interesting and once again not worth $8. We had a skewer of beef and mushroom and kobocha pumpkin that was great but was not worth half of it's 16 dollar per 4 inch skewer price. The eel was good, four small bites of meat for $18.The fries with eyes were much more fishy and salty than I remembered them being the first time I had them. They were inedible. The final course was a bento version of the smoked tuna collar, this should have been the best thing on the menu and it used to be. This was the only fish collar dish I have enjoyed and tried in this city. The earlier iterations of this dish was a simple collar, not saucy that melted in your mouth. The new collar is a very big collar drenched in a bbq glaze, it is served with pickles, very underseasoned/dry sushi rice, 4 or 6 pieces of nori that cost about $0.08 at my mart, a really nice miso sauce, and a "koji" hot sauce that just tastes like Tabasco- adding pasteurized cheap shio koji to it did not make it interesting or different. Once again the collar was fishy and salty. Kemuri does not sell raw or cooked tuna, they do not break down tuna, why are you guys buying old tuna collars from a fish monger, that probably aren't even cheap for your food costs, and selling it to your customers as your main attraction for $45? If I spend that on a dish like this there should be an abundance of the nori and rice so I can enjoy the dish. Instead I have run out of things to mask the cat food flavour of your fish collar and it just sits there stinking in front of me and my wife for almost twenty minutes staring at every staff member in the restaurant, for anyone to ask if we were done with it. We are brought the check and as I am trying to sign it and fill out the tip while the gm looms over looking at what I'm tipping- unacceptable. This manager looking guy asked the chef de cuisine about the tuna and he didn't even acknowledge the question he just ignored us. The chef de cuisine had been running the counter station in front of us all night and never once checked in. For $124 dollars it wasn't expensive, but me and my wife were served an insult on a plate rather than a hospitable experience. I wouldn't feed this food to my cat if they...

Until tonight this used to be my favorite place in Austin. I’ve been here many times and always enjoyed it. For that reason I always directed everyone who asked me about a great bar/eatery to go visit. I always talked this place up and loved to come here regularly. Today was my birthday. My sons asked me what my favorite place was and I told them I wanted to go there. One of my sons, who lives a bit further away had never been so I, as usual, described all the great food, service etc. I usually love the Tsukemen. It is supposed to come with a piece of delicious charred brisket. We ordered two portions. They are pretty small and expensive for the amount but I always deemed it worthy because of the delicious flavors. However what I received was not that delicious combination. Apparently they ran out of brisket and rather than say they were out or ask whether substitutions were acceptable, they presented us with an inferior dish containing 1 piece of pork belly, some ramen and the usual egg. To say I was dismayed is to downplay the disappointment I felt upon being served this. Not only the flavors were not there but the carelessness in the preparation was also evident. The amount they charged was the same they would charge for the original dish even though they did not serve what I paid for. In addition to that, we ordered the pork belly dish, charred edamame and some other stuff. We come here all the time. We know what the portions quantities are supposed to be. The pork belly dish only came with 2 tiny slices of pork belly for the price of a regular portion, the portion of edamame was also on the smaller side. The service was also very slow and inattentive. I had to move the grill from the grilled jerky to another table because my sons almost burnt themselves several times but no servers checked on us long enough so that I gave up and became my own busboy. My son paid the bill and gave a good tip because he works in the food industry but the embarrassment I felt having him look at me in wonder how I could say this was my favorite place ever will stay with me for a long time. I have traveled and dined all over North America and Europe and until tonight I truly felt this eatery was my favorite. Not anymore. My birthday celebration was pretty much ruined. After we left, we went and got food at a fast food restaurant, paid 1/4 of the amount we were charged here and that’s how everyone got supper and paid for two different restaurants in 1 night. I looked forward to tonight so much and now I feel like I was really let down. My son spent quite a bit of money and traveled all this way for a very negative experience. As we were leaving after paying quite a bit of money for a very disappointing meal, they asked us how our experience was and for the first time in years of coming here, I had to say it was terrible and asked why they served us a different dish but charged us just as much. Had they told us they had run out, we would have selected something else. It’s misleading and dishonest to charge people for a certain product but serve something...

Finally got to try Kemuri Tatsu-ya after having it on my to-eat list for a long time! I’ve always been a fan of ramen tatsuya, tiki tatsuya, and dipdipdip tatsuya so I was super excited.

Walked in on a Wednesday late afternoon and my husband and I got seated quickly. I must say, the atmosphere was a complete vibe. We were so excited to get some izakayas, sake and have a great evening.

I grew up in Vancouver BC where the Chinese and Japanese (especially izakaya) food scene is pretty big but I do feel that I tend to be very reasonable at adjusting my expectations to various restaurants based on geography and demographic. I was simply expecting tasty Japanese-Texan fusion.

We made the mistake of ordering primarily from the specials menu (basically ordered 4/5 of the available dishes) including the monkfish, deviled egg, squid marinated in guts, and tako wasabi (one of my favourite dishes in general).

The monkfish was fine, but it was sitting in a very salty ponzu-like sauce. Luckily I didn’t drench the monk liver in the sauce because it would’ve killed me lol.

The deviled egg was unique and tasty but same problem - the sauce on the bottom was insanely salty. I made sure not to over dip the egg and carefully picked it up onto my plate, but my husband dropped his egg into the salty sauce and he simply could not finish his egg after.

The tako wasabi had a few pieces just swimming in a similar, overly salty sauce which overpowered everything. I couldn’t taste the tako or the wasabi. We could not finish this.

The squid in gut was the same but this was the saltiest. We had to send this one back after downing a glass of water.

After being completely dehydrated due to osmosis, my husband and I drank more water and tried to redeem our evening by ordering dishes that perhaps Kemuri Tatsuya is more known for - skewers. We got the chicken thigh with green onion and these were good. Not great, just good. I think we would’ve enjoyed our experience more if we ordered cooked or bbq items but the daily specials just took us out lol.

I try to give restaurants a lot of grace, and I usually have a desire to come back to try different dishes before leaving such a negative review, but our experience here truly soured my evening and ultimately ruined our date night. We haven’t felt this disappointed about a restaurant in Austin in a long time.

What made it worse is that when I tried to politely express our disappointment to our waiter, he didn’t respond at all. He just took our dishes away and walked off. No attempt of verbal communication or resolution was made. This REALLY soured our mood. In the end, one $8 item from our tab was removed but for some reason that felt even more insulting considering.

I hope staff can take this feedback into consideration more seriously when a customer is expressing disappointment and/or dissatisfaction with the food. No customer should leave a restaurant feeling ignored, disregarded, and ultimately thirsty as hell eating very very badly...