Izakaya Fuku — Restaurant in New York

I love that when you walk in the door, you’ll be automatically greeted by the staff and brought to your table. There are also hooks on the wall next to your table where you can hang your coat and belongings. If you run out of space, the staff will help you hang it somewhere nearby. The staff here are very kind, patient, and friendly. Definitely a plus already!

However, the food could be better. We shared the following appetizers: Ika Sansai (squid salad with vegetables), Tako Wasabi, Karaage Chicken, Mentai Mayo Fries, and the Ponzu Tuna Tataki. By choice, I only had a small piece of the squid salad and the wasabi octopus because they weren’t that great. Both were too chewy so if that’s not your type of texture in food, maybe avoid them. The tuna tataki had excellent presentation but lacks a bit of taste… kind of bland. The karage was pretty good with a good amount of chicken and the lemon squeezed on top of the juicy interior was honestly the first thing I enjoyed here. The best appetizer we ordered though were the mentai mayo fries. That was definitely a favorite for the group! The fries were crispy, hot, and the paired with the mentai mayo was delicious even though I’m not a big fan of mayo (you taste more mentai than mayo here which was a big plus for us).

Speaking of mentai, we also ordered the Mentai Udon. Being a huge udon fan and since their mentai mayo from the fries were good, I expected a lot from this and was very very disappointed by it instead. This tasted like straight up mayo with noodles and I couldn’t eat more than a bite of this. I guess if you love mayo, order this? But you might as well put udon and mayo on a plate, mix it up and serve. Their presentation for this (and all their dishes) was pretty good though. The highlight was the bacon… when not covered in sauce.

I also tried the chili garlic Hokkaido and the zuwaikani pasta (snow crab pasta). Both had a tiny but very welcome kick to it. The chili garlic one was overly sweet for noodles but one of us ranked this his favorite of the 3 noodles! The snow crab pasta was the most neutral of all 3. Came with lots of fish eggs and snow crab!

I ordered the black garlic ramen to share because of all the recommendations to try it. I love garlic so I just had to try this. The ramen came with lots of mushrooms, 2 large pieces of char siu, scallions, and half a ramen egg. As this sets upon the table, all you smell is garlic! … but all you taste is also garlic. There was just too much garlic and after a while, it gets tiring, even for someone who loves garlic. Perhaps it’d be better if the black garlic came on the side and we could adjust it for ourselves.

Overall, food was honestly very meh. 3/5. The service/atmosphere 4/5.

When the bill comes, it comes in a dvd case which is pretty cute concept. This place is cash only!! Also, I’m not sure if they do this all the time, but gratuity was already included for us. It’s typical for restaurants to already have tip included for parties of 6 or more but we were only a group of 5. The staff here honestly should have said something. Usually staff at restaurants say something if they already include gratuity in the bill. Not seeing this, I included tip again… so read your bill carefully, people!!! … unless you want to give a 50% tip like I did and not realizing until hours later why the staff was so happy after the bill was collected… happy holidays...

We really wanted to like this restaurant.

The only reason why I didn't go for 1 star (which... if you follow my reviews, you know I'm not afraid to go there) is at least the service was attentive and when we did complain regarding the food, they didn't argue with us in terms of taking item off the bill. We went there because of all those 5 star revierws. Maybe we were on an off night or maybe we ordered wrong items. But something about the items we had (we had bento boxes) and overall vibes didn't really click with us and we were expecting so much more.

Getting into details - despite the fact that we both ordered similar items, one of us received the order like close to 10 min later than the other. That was the beginning. Then we noticed that the salad had no dressing and the egg didn't have any taste. Crabmeat salad on the rice was bit too spicy. Chicken and Saba whch were main items were fine but they really didn't offset the other items in the bento box that were underwhelming.

Then we realized that bento boxes had no miso soup (which... at every Japanese reataurant we've been to, whenever we ordered bento boxes, we always had miso coming with them). We asked for one and what we got is the soup that they use for miso ramen noodle so it was too salty and oiley. This si where we had to send the items back to the kitchen. We don't like to do this. But we didn't feel that there was any other way.

I don't know. It is cheap (only like $15) so I guess we get what we paid for. And we probably should have ordered other seemingly popular items. But we were sort of craving for bento boxes so...

But since this restaurant is getting enough 5 stars, clearly this place is liked by many and we would never tell anyone to stay away as far as this one is concerned (which again, I have no problem saying that if it was warrented. But I don't think this one deserves that and generally I don't like saying that to Asian businesses especially being one) I just don't think it was for us and that was our experience and ours alone.

At least I'll say this Atmosphere was good. Pretty authentically Japanese pub feel. And we did like the...

"Since I came to New York, I have visited this restaurant because one of my teachers brought me here, and I enjoyed it. However, today an unexpected situation arose involving the waitress." When we entered the restaurant, we mentioned that another person would be joining us later. However, the waitress informed us to wait until everyone arrived together. Moreover, she didn't smile and appeared to judge us based on our attire, despite us wearing ordinary clothes. We noticed her discriminatory behavior. After placing our food orders, once we finished, she inquired if we wanted to order more. We decided to order again, and even after finishing the second round, she approached us once more, pressuring us to order additional items. We also ordered drinks, but her demeanor conveyed a sense of urgency for us to leave once we were done.

Feeling dissatisfied, we requested to speak with the manager. However, when the manager arrived, he replicated the waitress's attitude and even failed to attentively listen to our concerns. During our conversation, he mistakenly handed food meant for a takeaway customer, which surprised us. When customers voice complaints, they should be listened to and their issues resolved, rather than ignored. On a positive note, there was one exceptionally courteous girl among the staff who made our visit worthwhile, and it was due to her that we chose to dine at the establishment.

I would like to advise the owner to exercise caution when selecting new staff members and emphasize the importance of prioritizing customers who arrived first. Despite spending nearly $180 today, we left a tip for the kind girl who provided good service. Unfortunately, the manager and another waitress displayed unacceptable behavior by being unhelpful and discourteous. This was an unprecedented negative...