Gen — Restaurant in New York

I've been really excited to try this place, but unfortunately this experience was overall quite disappointing. Starting off, we went on a Thursday evening, and the restaurant was empty. Nevertheless, it took us forever to get our entrees, though our appetizers came out more or less within a reasonable timeframe. Our server was personable enough, but disappeared for like 40 minutes while we were waiting for our entree and i ended up having to find them to get the check at the end as well. That's whatever, I work food service so I know that's how it goes sometimes, but I would have at least appreciated a checkin about the status of our food because my date and I were about to ask the kitchen to cancel our order by the time it finally arrived. Again, its not the end of world, and if had been busy, I would have understood, but that wasn't the case at all.

The most disappointing thing about this meal was ultimately the meal itself. We started off with a salmon belly avocado roll (I can't remember the name of the roll and their website is down). It was mostly rice, and the rice was noticeably unpleasant and unbalanced in flavor, being aggressively sour. The salmon itself was just as lackluster and the avocado was on the underripe side. I wouldn't complain about this if it was like a 15 or even a 17$ roll, but this was 22$, and I've had grocery store rolls that were on par with it.

We also tried the hijiki tempura, which was fortunately reasonably priced at $7, but the tempura overwhelmed the flavor of the seaweed completely. It really just tasted like used fryer oil, evoking all too vividly the flavor of country fair funnel cake.

I got the ramen, and I was underwhelmed. There were a decent amount of toppings, which is were a lot of ramen spots fall short, but the chashu pork belly was ice cold. I understand that is something prepped in advance then reheated by the individual serving, so there wasn't any danger of food poisoning or anything like that, but it detracted heavily from the dish. I would have asked our server to heat it up, but they were nowhere to be found as mentioned previously. The broth was also noticeably bad, lacking any sort of richness or depth, and tasting strongly of bouillon powder, which I can only imagine they used instead of the more expensive dashi stock. Again, I wouldn't be writing this if the prices were a bit more reasonable, but don't charge luxury prices and offer mediocre food.

My date's soba was also underwhelming. The dipping sauce was unbalanced, lacking depth and richness, while being overly salty, and the tempura toppings were oil-logged like the hijiki. The presentation was nice, but was not enough to make up for the meager portion of condiments. Daikon radish is dirt cheap, you can served more than a teaspoon with a $22 plate of plain noodles.

Overall, this was a very disappointing experience. The restaurant is beautiful, and years of good reviews lead me to believe this is a recent, and hopefully correctable, trend of mediocre food and poor service. I'm sure that number of our issues with the food could have been alleviated if our server had checked in, and I wouldn't have minded the absentee server if they had offered up an acknowledgement of the long wait times, if there had been more than 10 people total in the restaurant, or if the food was anywhere near the quality that the pricepoint would suggest.

Our tab was just shy of $100 after tip for 2 people not drinking. Next time, we'll take that money to Geido...

My allergies were not taken seriously.

Staff knowingly watch me eat a meal that was contaminated with my indicated allergy. I alerted them when ordering. The waitress acknowledged and even circled back if it’s ok my partner had that ingredient - how nice. However, my meal still came out with the ingredient I’m allergic to. I politely asked if this was a mistake and they apologized asking if I wanted it simply removed or remade - I said remade. This is where it gets infuriating: Instead of actually remaking it because it’s close to closing time; they just removed the allergen and put the remaining food onto a new plate with something to replace the allergen. And kept it in the back for however long to seem like they were remaking it.. Replating is not remaking it. After had eaten a small portion of the meal, I confronted them that it’s not actually remade. They admitted to it with whatever they felt was their justification - time, ingredients, efforts, etc. etc… it was just the gen don - rice, sashimi, and tempura. At my own judgment, I still picked at it, I didn’t finish the meal. Hoped for the best. Was able to walk out fine and still polite but later increasingly felt the effects.

I can forgive unintentional accidents - although it shouldn’t happen in the food industry with allergens. But what really is unacceptable and dangerous is that they literally watched me be poisoned to cover their mistake.

Also, the sashimi...

When I get sushi at a moderately to cheaply priced establishment, I am usually all about value. Give me lots of delicious fish for not so much money, and you have a friend in me. However Gen is in an interesting place where they substitute some value for creativity.

The creativity is what will bump this up from three to four stars. Right now the value part of my brain keeps sending me red signals. You had to order food after eating the omakase the last time you were there! Remember that time when you needed extra rice to go with the curry roll? This rating is wrong!!!

Settle down value brain. If Gen were the kind of place that just served up a couple rolls with the standard dozen types of fish, charged more because it's not a take out joint, you'd be right. But sometimes, something different is required.

I like that Gen does specials that change and are interesting. I like that there is a dinner vibe at 9:45 PM on a Sunday. I like that its an enjoyable experience that makes me look forward to going back. I like all of it enough to get that...