Anaba Japanese Cuisine Northshore — Restaurant in Knoxville

The food is good. I have enjoyed their ramen, their sushi and their curry. The eel wasn't that great though, which is a shame. I have liked the food enough to do take out from here multiple times.

But...the service isn't good. Every time we have eaten at the restaurant, the servers are slow, they don't seem to care and we have to get their attention just to do things like her refills.

This last time we went, I watched a server accidentally dump food down a wall near the entrance to the kitchen. It took them about 10 minutes to finally clean the floor. The food was still on the wall after we left an hour later. It became a joke at our table and makes me very afraid of what their kitchen actually looks like on any given night. It wasn't even super busy when we were there.

UPDATE I gave them another try for take out. Ordered at 6:15, got told to pick up our food at 6:45. 7:10 rolled around and we were told "the chef isn't feeling well, food is delayed, we will refund your food, but it is coming". 7:20 came and we asked for a refund receipt. So did another person that was waiting on their food too. 7:30 another server came out trying to explain the situation. No refund receipt yet. She was really rude to the other gentleman and started yelling at him. 7:40, we finally have food but no receipt for the refund. I talk to my father about just calling the bank and don't ng a charge back when the server starts yelling at me "sir that is not helpful". It is not my job to be helpful. It is my job to get my food and be able to leave, assured that the refund was posted and we weren't lied to. Did I speak loudly at that point making sure other patrons heard the "we were told your chef wasn't feeling well"? Yes. If the chef is sick, you close the restaurant. We were treated very poorly by the server, with the manager watching. As much as I loved the food of this place, we are done here. This is...

Worst service we’ve ever had here. The service was slow, but we understood the that they were busy for a Sunday night and we sat on the patio, which was most likely a pick-up section. When we didn’t get plates with our appetizer we asked our server for some and it look almost 5 minutes to get them while our appetizer was getting cold. Next, the sushi I ordered as my meal came out without soy sauce or a ramekin along with my daughter’s noodles that were supposed to have sauce that our server said she would add to them but didn’t. My husband’s meal didn’t arrive until almost 10 minutes later. He ordered one of the specials—spicy miso ramen with chicken. He received a different dish entirely. It was not spicy and was made with beef that was very fatty. We told our server and she did apologize, but she never sent a manager to the table or offered to take the meal off the check. His meal also had no egg in it, but there was an egg shell in his ramen bowl. To top it off, our dishes were dirty and you could tell they had not been properly washed, the table we were sat at was sticky and filthy, and the high chair had days old seaweed salad on it. They definitely need to work on training their staff on service standards, speed of service, and cleanliness. As someone that works in the service industry I was trying to give our server and the restaurant the benefit of the doubt on a few things considering she was probably new and very busy, but everything added together made it one of the worst dining experiences we’ve had in...

As a customer for many years I have tracked Anaba on Northshore as it has steadily fallen from Knoxville's most authentic Japanese restaurant to one I actively avoid. I didn't balk when friends invited me to join them here at dinner tonight, but I was reminded at every turn why I no longer choose to dine here.

The disappointment began as soon as our appetizers hit the table. The gyoza were quite good, but whoever is in the kitchen nowadays has no idea how takoyaki should be presented. Anaba's menu has a photo depicting the traditional octopus tentacles in fried balls of batter coated in savory sauce, Japanese mayo, and smoked bonito flakes; what we received were the fried octopus balls halfheartedly drizzled with some sort of spicy mayo. That's it. The dish was bland and joyless. The same could be said for my miso soup: no attempt at genuine miso and savory dashi stock flavor, just warm water with seaweed and tofu floating in it. It was shameful.

Lastly, if I am going to pay $21 for a bowl advertised as two kinds of salmon sashimi and smelt roe over sushi rice, then I had better receive more than five small slices of fish that had clearly been out of the cooler too long. 25% percent of my bowl was taken up by cheap shredded iceberg lettuce for goodness'...