Ginza Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Houston

Ginza is a place for great food but terrible atmosphere.

We trusted in the good reviews when coming here but it was clear after sitting down that people were rating the food but not spending enough time talking about the decor, layout and overall vibes.

The tables and chairs in this restaurant are ugly highback armless fake leather chairs, the kind you would find at a business or banquet hall setting. They drag down the ambiance down severely. The tables are too high. A crucial part of decorating a Japanese restaurant is project a "low" height to the environment; given that culture's history of floor seating and use or light colored warm woods in the decoration of traditional izakayas, robatas ramen shops or sushi houses.

Another big problem is the layout, a completely absence of booths and dull lighting creates a washed out cafeteria effect instead of trying to create a "cozy" effect that soft overhead lighting and a better seating plan could project.

The music being played is, frankly, laughably cringe. At one point I heard a country song, at other points generic pop from several years ago. I felt I was at a gas station in rural Louisiana filling my tank on the road to New Orleans. On the media front, there is hardly any interesting or pleasing art, and there are way way too many TVs on the walls creating an eyesore of sports or advertising that no one pays any attention to. This isn't a sports bar, one TV playing "the game" is ok but anything more and you're dragging the vibe down.

The management of this restaurant should visit Oishii in Greenway Plaza area to compare how a value Japanese restaurant can still look charming, warm, cozy and inviting. All of these qualities are severely lacking in Ginza at the moment.

To give them their due the food and service was good although definitely overpriced given how poor of a sit down experience it is aesthetically. In the future I would only consider this place for takeout.

We ordered two tiger eye rolls, katsu curry and chicken fried rice, total...

I usually do not leave one-star reviews, but the treatment our party received from the owner at the end of the evening, is NOT acceptable in any restaurant business. We were a party of 8 adults, kindly made a reservation, came at 6:15, left at 9:15. Typical turnaround time for a table of 8 ( I worked at different level restaurants, including fine dining, in my 20's). Everyone ordered one or two drinks and several plates each. The service up until 9 pm was very attentive, and this deserves a star. The food was not great, but good enough for the price. At the end of the evening, the owner told everyone that for the future (there will be no "future", of course), we should note, that the happy hour limit time is 2 hours, and that he LOST A LOT OF MONEY because of us. WOW. I have never heard that from any manager or owner of a restaurant anywhere in the world. If your business has a two-hour limit for happy hour, please inform your guests over the phone at the time of reservation! So there are no surprises. E.g, Caracol restaurant did that for Easter Brunch, and I appreciated knowing about this limitation in advance. If you don't like people coming to your happy hour, please, don't run this promotion! Just cancel happy hour for the entire weekend including Friday. When one of the ladies in our party left a negative review, the owner literally suggested to us to "go to Starbucks and camp out there". Unfortunately, with this attitude, people will "yelp you out" of a restaurant business very quickly. Thank you for the suggestion to try other places in town. Houston is the fourth-largest city in the US with no shortage of restaurants of every kind. We will go to Sozo sushi next time. They have a great happy hour menu, an amazing patio, better quality food, covered parking, no hourly limit, and they are happy to have us. It is also very unfortunate, that the owner leaves responses and ''suggestions to clients'', based on his assumptions, in a very rude, unprofessional,...

It pains me know to give such a low rating for this long time Memorialish establishment. Been going here for years and have always considered it Five Stars.

Recently ownership has changed hands. The staff is very friendly still and service is still very good, but there have been some changes for the worse. #1 atmosphere. Management replaced the tables and chairs that were in there before. They were never the best but it had charm to it. The artwork has been replaced with blank white walla. The tables are now a cheap fake wood top that are too high. The layout is just bad now. What used to be a lively place on a Friday night now has the vibe of a Chinese takeout restaurant.

Food:

My favorite roll the "Hi Five" roll has done two things.

1. gone down in quality(sushi is less quality and the rice isn't as firm"

2. the price has gone up. I understand this but it has become more expensive than upscale sushi restaurants without the same atmosphere. Probably could have gotten away with it of they hadn't eroded the previous atmosphere the restaurant had.

One bright spot was the fried rice. wasI'm It excellent as usual. The drinks were cold, but ising beer glasses for water is not the atmosphere I'm looking for when paying blue fish pricing. It also seems like the menu has shrunk down quite a bit.

Bottom line is what made this place special is gone now. New ownership is definitely doing their best, but I believe they vastly underestimated the client basis. We gave the restaurant a second chance because we came after the new management took over, but not much has changed. I hope things improve or it will fall in line with fountain view Cafe and La Visita. Will note that the manger is very nice and attentive. Rooting that it gets...