Japango — Restaurant in Boulder

WORST DINING EXPERIENCE I HAVE EVER HAD — $865 BILL FOR WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN $120.

My party of six came here during happy hour, expecting a straightforward night of rolls and drinks. Instead, we walked away with one of the most insulting, wasteful, and downright incompetent restaurant experiences imaginable.

Let me break it down: The Waitress (Pink Hair, Septum Piercing) – From the start, she clearly had little understanding of the happy hour menu she was supposedly explaining. The “handrolls” are listed as $4.50 each, which should have made our bill around $20 per person. Instead, due to her absolutely critical errors in note-taking and describing the menu, we were blindsided with an $865 tab. Her largest mistake? When describing meat/fish options for the $4.50 happy hour handrolls, she explicitly said “wild salmon” was included. Guess what? That “wild salmon” wasn’t $4.50—it was $25 each. That alone inflated our tab astronomically. Either she had no clue how to explain the menu or she deliberately up-sold us under false pretenses. Order Mistakes – Beyond that, we ordered items like the hamachi carpaccio with very clear instructions: NO soy sauce due to allergies. The waitress ignored this, the chef ignored this, and the dish came drowned in soy. That isn’t just careless, it’s dangerous. Several other items were brought to the table that we didn’t order, while things we specifically did order were forgotten or replaced with higher-priced alternatives. This wasn’t one mistake—it was a pattern of sloppiness that ruined the night and put people’s health at risk. Quality – For a bill that came out to $865, you’d expect world-class sushi. Instead, we were served what tasted like cheap, bland, poorly prepared rolls that would barely pass for all-you-can-eat buffet quality. Totally unacceptable. Manager Response – When we brought this disaster to the manager, instead of fixing it or removing the wrongful charges, he insulted us further by comping just $125. That didn’t even come close to addressing the fact that we were served food we didn’t order, food that was made incorrectly, and food that was dangerous to one of our guests. No substitutions, no genuine attempt at resolution—just a token discount to shut us up.

At the end of it all, our table of six walked away with a shocking $865 bill for what should have been a $120 night of happy hour rolls. We left hungry, frustrated, and disgusted.

👉 Final word: This restaurant doesn’t just fail at service, it fails at honesty, safety, and basic professionalism. If management thinks keeping staff who cannot describe the menu properly, cannot take accurate notes, and cannot respect allergies is acceptable, then this place deserves every bad review it gets.

The waitress with pink hair and a septum piercing should either be retrained from scratch or fired outright. She directly caused this situation by misrepresenting the menu and taking orders sloppily, and the chef compounded the issue by ignoring clear instructions.

🚫 I will never be returning. If you value your money, your health, or even just basic competent service, avoid this place at...

So, Japango says they pride themselves on handling allergies well but they sure didn't last night. We ordered appetizers, specified gluten free, and one of them came out not gf. I asked the person who delivered the food to make sure it was but she took so long that I gave up and just ate. I assumed she wasn't actually returning and decided to think the food came out correctly in this expensive, fancy, exclusive Japanese restaurant. I mean, places where my meal costs under $10 get it right all the time. Wrong thinking. We learn the "kitchen messed up" although the waiter entered it correctly. Umm, ok. The person who delivered the food says to me, "It's just in the sauce." Oh, ok, then I should be fine. Thanks for telling me I am safe to ingest small portions of my allergen. I mean, really?

Then we are told the owner will "take care of us" and handle the rest of our order which she does. Waiter is totally awesome and apologizes profusely multiple times. We actually love him. Owner sort of does. Rest of food is presumed safe at this point. Rest of food is also incredibly amazingly overrpriced. We did not recall prices like these last time we were here but we were celebrating our son's 16th birthday so we stayed. This is an aside but related to when the bill comes. Appetizer that contained gluten has NOT been taken off the bill. Wow. So now I am paying for my allergen. Nothing else has been "taken care of" either to accomodate the very serious thing that has happened. Double wow. We are talking a bill over $225 for 5 people.

So, I guess they didn't really care. We just had a similar experience at another inept restaurant (to which we will never return) and they comped the entire meal. I wasn't expecting that but was certainly expecting something. So, yeah, one star for this place and a big zero for the oh so caring owner. Thanks. A lot. My experience after leaving the restaurant last night was super as I dealt with the fact I had ingested an allergen because of your inattentive kitchen staff.

I kept a smile on my face solely due to my son's birthday. I hope Japango's staff and owner didn't think that meant all was great and I was enjoying my gluten. But I actually think they might have.

Japango = NO GO. Hapa Sushi is great though and very close by. They always take care of us. Allergens are handled seriously without requiring owner...

Brought my best friend here for the dinner of her Bachelorette party. We had a party of 8 so I called. They said they could have a table ready for us at 7:30. We arrived about 5 min early and began our wait. We were finally sat at 8:20. We were all very hungry and a little frustrated by this point. They did bring us 2 plates of edimame on the house which was nice. We quickly ordered drinks and started looking at our menus. The server was great at explaining everything and we thought the long wait to get sat was the last of it. Then more and more waiting began. Some drinks took more than 15 min to come out. We ordered our food and 3 people's meals came out in about 20 min. The rest of us were ready to receive our dishes. 30 min later the rest of the food started making its way out. The food was very good. Very tasty. We then asked for our bill. Our server was nice enough to do the math to "split" it for us since there is no splitting. The bill surprised us at $345. The math didn't seem to add up and we asked our server if he had autogratted us. (because that math did make sense) he said he didn't and we took his word for it. We didn't get to leave until 10 pm... I say "get to" because we had many other things planned for the evening, this was just supposed to be dinner and we weren't spending a lot of time chatting... Most of the time was spent waiting. Everyone that interacted with us was very nice, but dreadfully slow and quite expensive. Had a manager stopped by or ANYONE let us know why it took almost an hour to get our meals or why some people got their dinner half an hour before, we probably would be willing to return. With all the great sushi restaurants in boulder, I'm not planning on giving this one...