AJITO — Restaurant in Cupertino

I came here with my family on a Sunday night and we didn’t have a reservation but we waited around 20-30 minutes to get seated.

Vibe: the place has a hipster vibe, the lighting is darker than most places but is very clean

Service: the food came relatively quickly, though they forgot one of the dishes we ordered so we had to remind them

Food: we got the salmon avocado tartare and the squid ink udon and the risotto, beef tongue stew, chicken skin skewer, salmon skin salad, daikon mochi, and yellowtail fish.

The beef tongue stew and chicken skin skewer and risotto stood out the most as interesting and flavorful dishes — the chicken skin skewer was perfectly crispy and savory and the stew was cooked to a tender texture and had nice baguettes to absorb the flavor. The risotto was prepared in front of us on a cheesy base and was very tasty though the portion size was smaller.

The salmon avocado tartar was decent but was quite small, the chips were a nice touch and the sauce was flavorful. It almost tasted like an unrolled salmon avocado sushi with chips instead of rice.

The daikon mochi was decent but I didn’t quite find the fried savory taste as good as if it had red bean instead inside.

The udon was quite good but also small in portion size and had a good kick to it with the flavorful ink.

Overall, enjoyed the experience, unclear if I’ll go ahead but the food was very beautiful and it’s definitely a...

I don't usually post reviews of restaurants I've only been to once but I was rather surprised by the experience considering I had no expectations coming in for a place we picked out just because it was close. We came here with a 1 year old so we ordered a variety of things but what stood out to me was the simple plate of salmon slices. Of all the sashimi orders we had, this was the only one to have a side of real wasabi, still on top of the grater no less. I can count on one hand the number of random Japanese restaurants I've been to that actually offer real, grated wasabi (not counting fine dining establishments or places in Japan itself). I'm not sure why it was included in only this dish but not the others that had the standard green horseradish but I'll have to find out for next time.

We also ordered the kaki fry (deep fried oyster) and it came with the standard dipping sauces which I didn't think much of until I tried the tartar sauce. I exclaimed to my wife how that one "throwaway" sauce could have been its own thing based on how good it was. It was a more egg-forward tartar than most places at a time when most restaurants are cutting back on ingredients to cut costs.

It's little details like these that make me give this restaurant provisional full marks until we go back at least a second time to try more...

We went to see what the hype was about their special Kaisen bento box, to compare it with the Chirashi Sushi at TGI Sushi. when we went in, there was no one at the front to even ask us how many of us there was going to be. A woman came in behind us and a waitress came out, looked past us to ask what she wanted: she wanted a take out. She was served while we stood there. Finally we were taken to a table and told to order on the laptop computer that was there, & asked what we wanted to drink. No instructions about ordering but that was easy to figure out. We did that. No human contact at all until, after a while, all the food & drink was put on the table by the waitress without a single word. When we finished, we waited more than 5 minutes to be able to flag the only waitress down for the bill which was quickly produced. Shortly after that, she came back with the hand held credit card thing, we paid & left. (Husband left 20% tip which I thought was way too much for all that silence.) Not going back. my suggestion: Try some other place. I like a friendly hello, a "how is the food" in the middle, a "thank you", a "goodbye, come back soon"...