Tsuru Ton Tan - Union Square — Restaurant in New York

The third time I know that my first and second time the service is horrible but I still love their food. Lol So I decided to visit this place again and finally they improved their service. The waitress and runner are nice. They take a good care of us. The food served more faster and not forget anything. And the food is also yummy. Thank you so much for your work hard to improve the restaurant. I really like your food.

The second time I gave this restaurant a second chance for try the all you can eat buffet. The service still horrible as the same. We order two soups but we get only one soup. They always forget what we ordered. You have to put all your afford to get attention from them. How many percent of tips that they expect from this kind of service? When the friend of the waiter came to sit on the table next from us. They get extremely friendly attention from him.

Our soup has dried into the bottom of the pot but no one care. We do understand that it all you can eat but we probably not allows to be able to get the food from the kitchen but believe me if I can I will. Therefore, my first review is below. I keep it in original version.

First review We went there for the all you can eat but unfortunately we can't be there on time. The waitress said that the all you can eat and Japanese hotpot function has stopped serving at 8:30 pm and we was there at 8:35 pm even the restaurant has closed at 10:00 pm. So we try their Udon instead of Japanese hotpot. The Udon bowl is so elegant. The portion is extremely big. Unfortunately one of our friends order her favorite thing 'Uni udon' but the Uni got fishy smell and we have to wait so long before the waitress come to check on us. Then she bring the whole bowl back to kitchen and com back with the answer 'the Uni hasn't imported from Japan so it got some smell.' We didn't have any argument with her on that day because that was an answer from the chef. So we just asked her to take it back and take it out from the bill.

And hope they understand that people who love to eat Uni know that it fresh or not. Maybe just our unlucky day. By the way the other bowl which consists of beef and sukiyaki soup is awesome. I definitely come back for this or try to find time to get there earlier for the...

I was fortunate to come here before 6pm one night and lucky me... no wait!

Tsurutontan is an establishment that people are familiar with in Japan and they decided to open up their first shop in the USA by Union Square! This place is decently sized and I think there was a lot of hype in the first week as I heard there were crazy waits. There is good reason though, as I feel the food is great.

The ambiance and feel of this place was delightful, coupled with the very nice and attentive servers here. She even was promoting how nice the menu looked (which yes, it did look very well done)! There were so many choices of appetizers and different types of udon (hot, cold, traditional, and unique styles), along with some rice bowls if you are actually not feeling udon (but you really SHOULD try the udon, as its KNOWN for it!). Anyways, after careful deliberation, I decided to go for what was apparently their most popular dish, the cold Uni Udon. When I ordered this, you have the option to get the "large" order, which to be honest, is still a very manageable size.

Upon receiving my bowl, I have to say that this was one of the best bowls of udon I ever had in the United States. I felt there was just the right amount of sea urchin and flavor in it. What really won me over was a very simple ingredient, the sesame seeds, as it provided a nice mixture of taste. The udon noodles themselves were prepared very well with the right amount of texture. This definitely is illustrated by the fact that the udon is prepared in-house.

Maybe I tried their best dish here?!? Who knows, I would have to come back here and try some other bowls of udon... but with how good the Uni Udon is... that will be hard to actually follow-through...

My dining experience there was really awful. I can’t believe this restaurant joins NYC Restaurants Week 2023 and tries to impress customers with bad services and poor utensils.

We ordered “Premium All You Can Eat” for 5 People with 1.5 hours limitation of dining time. However, we waited almost 20 minutes to have 1 dish (Sushi 2pcs) on the table after we placed the first order…….but we had 5 people……after few minutes I asked a waitress when the rest dishes would be available…….By the way, no plates and only had 3pcs of napkins on our table until we asked them to prepare the utensils for us.

When a staff cleaned up the table after we finished the first round of dishes, he suddenly put a spoon that was not belonged to me on my own plate (they never changed plates for customers proactively). I felt angry at that moment since what he did was so rude!! What’s wrong with him?? No place for this spoon, so that he just simply put the spoon on my plate??!!

When we asked for 5 small bowls from them, we found that all bowls were broken. I took photos on 3 of them that customers get hurt easily if they don’t play attention on it. From the broken utensils, I can tell how they respect themselves and their customers!!

We will not go back to this restaurant any more!! I already shared my awful experience to my friends. I highly do NOT recommend this restaurant to others. Go ahead……..If you want to challenge yourself and try to get hurt by their...