House of Genji — Restaurant in San Jose

Honestly this place sucked and it sucked bad.

Disclaimer: the Chef was REALLY nice and so was the staff that was in charge of cleaning up/picking up plates and the like.

To start we had made dinner reservations for 8PM. When we arrived for our dinner reservations we were told to wait. No problem, a little wait is super fine. Well, we weren’t seated until 9:10PM. What was the point of reserving a table if the table wasn’t available?

The worst part is the establishment CLOSED at 9PM. The second worst part was we didn’t get our food started on until nearly TEN (10) PM. Almost TWO (2) hours after our reservation had been reserved for.

Unfortunately this establishment is unorganized, and the entire wait was in a dingy bar area that smelled like smoke and alcohol which was horrible for the children we had with us.

Now because we weren’t served until nearly an hour after closing, the staff rushed us the entire time to eat and threw upset looks. Again, UNDERSTANDABLE. Except I felt that their ire was misplaced.

It is clear management has no idea how to effectively and efficiently run a restaurant. It is also clear that they’re taking advantage of their staff/are short staffed to begin with.

To make matters even worse the food was OK. Not close to being great but not so horrible that it was inedible.

All of that for OK food.

I never ever ever leave bad reviews. I firmly believe that most restaurants are allowed to have bad days. From the sounds of it however, House of Genji does this regularly.

Management needs a big wake up call and to not over book on nights they cannot handle the volume of customers they are getting. That OR cut off walk-ins when you know you have reservations.

All in all I heavily do NOT recommend House of Genji.

TLDR; SAVE YOURSELF MONEY AND GO...

We love the food here! So happy it reopened after Covid shut down. Gave 3 stars because it reeks of cigarette smoke when you walk in and the bathrooms-try not to use or breathe through your mouth if you have to. For some reason there is a really bad sewage smell and sometimes it can be smelled in the bar and into the seating area where you eat. Don’t be alarmed if you go in and it seems like someone took a stanky one cos that is not it. Lol. That’s what my kids thought because it is visually clean..it just stinks super bad. The masks do not help at all. Our most recent visit was last week on a Tuesday. They called our group of 4 fairly quickly. Maybe 15 minutes after checking in. Sat at the table and waited for about 5 minutes before they came to take our orders but, no one else was seated yet. Another 5/6 minutes and they brought out our salad, after maybe 10 minutes, brought out soups. Still no one came yet to our table. During this time though of getting salad and soup, two separate groups of 3 came in and were seated elsewhere. I would say maybe 15/20 minutes later, the chef came over and said it was just us as someone else took the extra dishes away. Super cool we got to spread out and not be squished into a corner but, not cool we were waiting at the table for possibly another small group for over an hour. That’s never happened before. Also, portions were way smaller and even though I told them my son and I were sharing and my husband and daughter had their own (regular entree and a child’s) they didn’t give my daughter anything on her plate and gave my son her steak and me the chicken but it was in portions like they were shared. Usually a ton of veggies and maybe had half the amount on 3 plates. Super bummed this last visit...

Disappointing. This place has so much potential: decent decor, food cooked to order at your table provides entertainment, fresh ingredients and their portions are generous. But the cook completely ruined it for us, by providing rude service and screwing up the food. I ordered the seafood combo (lobster, prawns, scallops) and I was happy with the ingredients I saw, the fish was fresh and very reasonable size (especially the scallops). However, the guy squeezed an entire lemon on top of each one of the items, so as I was eating the food, it was like I was drinking pure lemon juice and could barely taste any of the seafood meat itself :-/ Pretty sad to ruin a good piece of seafood like that. The vegetables were also pretty bad, very bland, lacking seasoning and very soggy. He sprinkled a lot of one of the cooking liquids on them, but it didn't add any flavor and made them very soggy. Same with the fried rice, lacking salt and seasoning in general. And he was rude. When he gave me my fried rice and I passed it on to my wife (we had ordered one plain rice and one fried rice) he looked at me in disapproval and said I ordered the rice, not her. I just told him we were sharing, but wtf? Then, one of the persons in the other party at the same table, had ordered chicken + prawns, but he got mistaken and put scallops on her plate. When she pointed it out, instead of apologizing and fixing it, he told the customer she was wrong and that she had ordered the scallops, while she looked in disbelief at him. double wtf.

So, if they properly train their chefs in cooking skills and customer service, they might actually be a nice place to go. Until then, not planning to come...