Nakama Anime Cafe — Restaurant in Fruit Cove

Edit in response to owner’s comment:

Anytime I’ve had ice cream mochi it was cold and chewy, not nearly solid frozen.

I regularly buy better, cheaper dango that comes with three skewers at Jacksonville Beach and other cities I’ve been. But honestly I would’ve been fine with the price on any of the products if it tasted good, that’s value. But I didn’t enjoy a lot of it, I didn’t feel the value after two visits.

I did expand on the buns, I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t get two buns for $8 but that for $8 those buns weren’t that good. It is cheaper than Hawkers so I’ll give you that.

On the onigiri your menus have no description anywhere so I took a chance. Sorry I’m not an expert on Japanese cuisine, usually whenever I bought onigiri anywhere it was something in it, not just rice and sauce. But I guess that’s on me.

Last time I went the cafe was out of takoyaki and dango, second time I went they were also takoyaki, both on the menu. Thankfully I still talked my friends who REALLY wanted those items to try something else before walking away. I can sympathize when you run out of product or some stuff can be hard to get more of but it still sucks and makes anyone think twice about ordering again if it happens often.

At the end of the day I didn’t enjoy the food as much as I’d like, I felt like I didn’t get a good value for what I’ve paid from both visits and I’ve had better elsewhere.

I visited this cafe twice so far. First time was close to closing time and the second was after 6pm dinner.

There’s just nothing “good” here. We’ve tried several menu items that we could get (they were often out of the items we wanted) and all of it was just bland.

Karaage buns with no almost flavor, dango with zero flavor and was still frozen, onigiri with good sauce but zero stuffing, mochi that was frozen almost solid, bland matcha cheesecake. There’s more examples but we don’t have all day.

The prices were a little off for the portions ($4 for 1 dango, shops usually sold 3 for $6. $8 for two small buns were okay but for the flavor it wasn’t worth that much).

Service was friendly but a little slow. No take out menus for the bar (they asked us to take a picture with our phones and show our friends at the bar which they owned).

Nothing was glaringly bad but it was death by a thousand paper cuts. I want to support this cafe because there isn’t a lot of Japanese street food in town but I’ve left disappointed too...

⚠️PLEASE READ!!⚠️

I went with my dad and sister to this cafe, and at first I looked at the reviews and thought, “the food looks amazing let’s go.” But I was so wrong. At first glance I immediately noticed how many people were there but so little seats. We had to sit at another table with another family for us to fit.

The food: We ordered 2 ramens and some kfc boa buns. When we first received the food, I was somewhat shocked and very disappointed. The ramen was in this plastic container and it was horribly decorated, all the ingredients were under the noddles. The noodles were very clumped together and it was hard to take apart with the plastic fork that they gave us. It was clear that the noodles were saved beforehand and just plopped into the container. The broth tasted unpleasant and honestly was very unappetizing to eat. Some ingredients weren’t even included in the ramen. The pork was so rubbery and chewy, it was hard to even rip apart with my teeth. Now for the kfc (Korean fried chicken) boa buns. It was clear that the chicken was not homemade there, and was bought from a Walmart rotisserie chicken section. It wasn’t all that bad though and was honestly good. For dessert we got mochi and dango which were extremely overpriced. When we first got it it came frozen and we had to wait a couple minutes for it to thaw. For only 2 Mochi icecream it was $3 which was WAY too overpriced. I can get the 6 mochi ice-creams at Walmart for only one dollar more. Now for the dango, it was quite small and barely tasted anything sweet. I could only taste some matcha on the green ball but that was it.

Atmosphere:

The place was over crowded and had little to no tables, but it was mostly okay. The bar had a nice karaoke area that people could sing at, the only thing I enjoyed tbh. It was always playing anime and there were manga panels on the ceiling. I didn’t care for it but it was fine.

Service:

The service was amazing! Everyone was so nice there and they even opened the door for us to leave.

⚠️IN CONCLUSION!!⚠️

The food isn’t all that great and honestly unappetizing but is a okay place to grab a quick bite with your friends and to hang out. Wouldn’t go back to this...

Update Huge shout out to the manager Shawn, he went out of his way to get to the bottom of what happened and why I was over charged. He went out of his way to go down to the restaurant and went through all of the credit card receipts to find where the error was. Another customer had left a 40 dollar tip and their card number was 1 number off from mine and it slipped through the cracks. Shawn went above and beyond to fix the problem in less than 2 hours. He gave me a call back to explain everything and had me come down and meet him face to face and apologize again and gave us complementary japanese sodas. We will be back to try more of their food items. Thank you again Shawn for going above and beyond to make this right

Found this restaurant on tik tok and we were excited to check it out as my boyfriend is big into anime. The atmosphere is good and its not an over crowded establishment. everything seemed nice. We ordered a Luffy's dinner, a chicken and shrimp dinner, and a sushi roll, our total was supposed to be right around 50 dollars. I paid the 50 is dollars on my debit cars and the next day I checked my bank account and was charged 91 dollars and some change so i gave the restaurant a called and let them know I was over charged. I was told by the staff that was because their system hold extra money and the money would be returned within a week. I waited over a week and never saw the money return to my bank account so I contacted my bank and did a partial dispute. I was given a provisional credit while they investigated the claim. The bank had contacted their bank and they told the bank I was not over charged so the bank took the provisional...