Tora Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Boston

TL:DR at the bottom.

I typically don't write reviews and don't judge a restaurant by their service, but this is definitely an exception.

I go on a Friday afternoon, there was no wait to sit at the bar. The waitress/host greets me and takes me to my seat. She is friendly at this point.

When the waitress comes back and asked if I was ready to order. I say that I would like the Tokyo Don (salmon, squid, scallop, and flying fish roe), which was delicious but I'm not writing about the food. The waitress confirms that I said Tokyo Don.

I get my water and wait patiently while browsing on my phone. A couple comes in a few minutes after I did and orders. About 10 minutes later and the couple starts getting their food. At this point I just assume they had a lot of people order and my order was just taking awhile (it was not busy).

Another 10 minutes pass (about 20 minutes after I ordered) and the waitress says that my food should be coming out shortly. Meanwhile, she goes and apologies to a man sitting two seats down from me because they got his order wrong.

5 minutes pass, the couple that ordered after me and the man have left, and I get get my food. Except the waitress brought me a gyu don (beef bowl). I politely tell her that I ordered the Tokyo Don. The waitress, in a distaining voice, says "you ordered Tokyo Don!?" like it was my fault for screwing up the order. She walks away in a huff with the food, no apologies. About a minute later another waiter brings me back the same bowl and I tell the same thing I told the waitress. He takes the bowl back and gives it someone on the opposite side of the room from me.

Another 5 minutes go by and the waitress brings my food out, drops it on the the table with about 25% of the tray hanging off the edge of the table. She quickly walks away and eventually comes back to fill my water.

I finish my food and I wait for my check. At this point I assume that I would receive an apology. Waitress comes by, slams the check on the table and quickly walks away. She comes back, scans my card and drops the bill and my card in the table. I have a metal card and the drop was pretty audible.

For some reason she stapled the merchant and customer copy receipt together so I couldn't keep one for my record. And I ended up leaving a less-than-stellar tip.

I wrote this review because of the lack of apology. I remained calm and respectful during my time there but the wait staff could not offer the same. If they had offered an apology and not have given sour attitude towards me, I would have never written this. But this is unacceptable.

TL:DR Took 30 minutes to get food. Screwed up my order, blaming me. And waitress/host feels entitled to be rude to me. Food...

I had such high hopes for this place. I had a party of three and arrived at Tora around 6pm and there were four people ahead of me in line. Seeing as the space was super cramped, I opted to write my name and party number down for the hostess who told me that it would be a 15-20 minute wait, and she asked me to wait right outside the entrance of the restaurant, assuring me that she'd call for us when our turn was due. We waited outside for 45 minutes without any notice when I decided enough was enough and went back inside to ask the hostess what had happened, only to find out that she had crossed out my name on the waitlist and was seating other parties who had arrived later than we did. I did not receive a single apology nor a shred of remorse from the hostess, who then had us wait another 15 minutes before seating us at a table for two.

We were squished together at the table for all of 10 minutes before the party of four next to us left, which prompted us to ask the big asian waiter if we could switch to that table since it was really cramped at our small table. Not only did the waiter snap at us really rudely by saying "Can't you see we're busy??? NO" he then sat another table of 3 at the table we wanted.

Service was super rushed and sloppy, it felt like they couldn't wait to get us to leave, and they hadn't even cleared the table before rushing to bring us the cheque. The hefty asian waiter held on tightly to the card machine and DECLINED the transaction because we only tipped 10%. As someone whos worked in the service industry before, I believe that only good service warrants a good tip. He then threw a fit and fussed about the higher tip saying it was MANDATORY to tip 15%. If its mandatory then why isn't it automatically calculated as part of our bill???? Ridiculous and pathetic excuse. My friend then tried to tip him with cash as we didn't want to repeat the transaction and he flicked the cash(8 DOLLARS for a 40 dollar total bill) we put on the table and SNEERED about how little it was and that it wasn't even 10 dollars. It was absolutely disgusting and classless, it is painfully apparent that TORA needs to invest heavily in training their waitstaff in basic manners and human decency. He also told us that he couldn't reverse the transaction as only the manager could do that but then refused to call the manager over to the table when we requested for him to do so and kept being extremely aggressive in his tone of voice. Absolutely abhorrent waiter and completely trash service; quite possibly the worst service I've had the misfortune to...

was very excited to try this place, but this visit, while satisfactory overall, did not seem to live up to the hype, especially at this price range.

good: broth and egg in soba poke salad food is fresh

bad/meh: chasiu had chewy part soba was a bit sticky and choppy pricing on certain items one item was incorrect (not sure which one i was charged, but only $3 diff)

ugly: canned peach in poke bowl ... wut shrimpies (tiny ones) in poke bowl did not taste good

in hindsight, should have placed an online / phone order for pickup. that way at least things are more clear.

walked in for takeout around 5pm. restaurant was almost fully seated, they are also hiring so probably short staffed? i didn't have the menu ready on my phone (my bad) so I referred to the one on the wall. pointed to the sakura kaisen don, and was informed that it was not available. had to find a replacement in haste. a minute later I pointed to the one on the right of the sakura, along with a few other things. order was orally taken without notepad, and payment was made at the counter. was quickly shown an itemized receipt, but quite honestly I would not know one name from the other, so even if the order was taken incorrectly from the getgo, I wouldn't know.

only found out something was not right when i opened the boxes. upon checking the menu again, i was given the kaisen don on the left of the sakura instead of the one on the right. mistakes are made, no big deal. but for value, i would rather pay $3 more for the one that has more variety of seafood, than paying $26 for merely a few kinds of common sushi fish at 2-3 slices each. In comparison, the one i got from Maruichi for same price or less made my tummy happier.

tuna and shrimp poké bowl... well, again, my fault for not studying the menu prior to randomly picking something. but I'm not sure if this is a generally accepted concept, or if I'm justified to be feeling "?!?" to see canned peach in poké. even so, that's not the worst offender. the little shrimpies still got that frozen taste to it, and it's not visually appealing to see dark trail running down their translucent back. miso dressing was also not very present, if existent.

saving grace was the poke salad (well-dressed), and the egg in soba (flavorful). the rest... while satisfactory for a meal, unfortunately didn't give me enough confidence to attempt the $40+ Tora Don in...