Anju — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

I was really looking forward to having my anniversary dinner here. As soon as we walked in, the reception said they were just getting our table ready. While we were waiting, the staff tried moving a bag on the shelf in the front, and knocked over vases that crashed and shattered all over me. They did not stop to see if I was ok. They rushed and swept it away. We were being pushed around as there was no space for us to move while they cleaned the mess they made. On top of that, when I asked when our table would be ready, the manager said "very soon, we're telling the patrons there that they need to leave". Which is different than what she originally said, which was that they were just getting our table ready. After another wait, we were finally seated. The food was ok, nothing special. The space is overcrowded for sure. Looks like they added as many tables as they can, without thinking about the comfort of the customers. It's extremely bright inside, which is not the vibe they portray from...

Overall I like eating here. There are types of food and flavors that you can’t find anywhere else in the five towns. So to start, we had the rainbow salad which was excellent. The truffle dumplings were really phenomenal, the broth had so much umami. The gyoza was okay, the shell was dry when they cooked it so it came out hard which kind of ruined it, the sauce was well done though. The spicy tuna crispy rice was good, but the tuna portion was scant. The orange chicken flavor was great but the meat was dry, why can’t they get this right? We ordered the toro sashimi which was at an excellent price to quality ratio. For mains we had the ribeye which was done really well, the accoutrements were just right. I liked what they tried to do with the short ribs by slicing them thinly but they totally overcooked them. Unfortunately, the pad Thai was terrible, it had no flavor whatsoever, but most people will never know because you can’t get pad Thai anywhere else...

Excellent new Asian cuisine restaurant. Service was fantastic and food came out quickly. Never had to ask for anything as the waitress kept checking in on us. Dishes we loved were the anju Caesar salad, gyoza, udon, Chilean sea bass, sesame chicken, toro sushi roll, and the duet beef main. The few dishes we didn't like were the pastrami egg roll and tuna tartare app. Drinks were all also delicious. I'm never a fan of desserts at kosher meat restaurants and unfortunately this wasn't any different as the pineapple dessert was pretty bad. But if you're just going here to eat dinner I highly recommend this place. It is a bit pricey (over $100 pp) but worth it...