Taste Of Japan — Restaurant in Town of Henrietta

Having just moved from the San Diego, where I knew many of the AYCE places, including sushi, I had to find one in Rochester for some post workout meals.

The restaurant is located in the corner of a strip small with a neon OPEN sign outside. The windows had the curtains up, so you couldn't see much inside, so it looked a bit dingy.

Inside, it wasn't that much different unfortunately. The place is dimly lit, though the tables are well spread out and separated by bamboo curtains to make the place seem spacious. It's ambiance is quiet and quaint, if you are looking for that, then that's great. However, you will be disappointed if you are looking for a lively environment.

The service was very friendly, but extremely slow. There were only 3 tables at the time, and it took about 40 minutes to get us through our appetizers, soup, and salad, before the main sushi entrees came out. I was getting very aggravated at that point considering that it looked like a slow night, it shouldn't take so long. As we progressed through our meal, I came to find out that sushi was prepared at a much quicker rate compared to the rolls, so that improved my mood. On the topic of food, it was tasty and right around what I was expecting given the area, price, and AYCE option.

Our waiter, who seems like the co-owner (small family run place) was, as I said, friendly. It was enjoyable talking to him and getting to know the restaurant's history.

Conclusion: It's worth coming here for the food, and perhaps if you like the...

I arrived on a Saturday at 1:53pm and there was a solitary gentleman eating at one table and 2 ladies eating at another. The room was very dim and smelled a little funny but since the online menu said they had chicken curry I decided to stay. The server brought me a menu and came back 10 minutes later to bring me water and take my order. They don’t really have chicken curry. I was sad. By this point I am the only patron in the restaurant. 15 minutes later the server brings me my miso and salad, which were tasty. I had an appointment at 3:00 and started nervously checking my watch when the server never came back. If I had cash I would have just put it on the table and left. But I didn’t have enough cash and didn’t want to be a food thief so I waited until 2:42 when the server finally came out with my 4 pieces of sushi and I apologized and asked if she could wrap up my entree as I no longer had time to eat it. I quickly ate my sushi (which I was very disappointed about because I love to savor it) with the hopes of a quick departure, but it still took almost 10 minutes for the server to come back with my bag of food (which, when I got home a few hours later, I realized wasn’t even what I ordered). I was ultimately in this restaurant alone for almost an hour. Unless they were going into the back garden and plucking the lettuce for the salad or butchering the pig as I waited, I don’t understand why it took so long. Or why the server was gone...

The whole experience was rather awful. First, the place is dark and dingy, not a nice Japanese vibe. We waited for our food quite a while, and had to ask twice to get the appetizer brought before the entrées. As for the food, the miso soups, seaweed salad and lettuce salads were fine, nothing special but not bad either. I also ordered some salmon nigiri, which was pretty good, probably the best part of the meal and the only reason this review gives two stars and not one. For the entrées, we got sukiyaki and oyakodon. The sukiyaki STANK! It didn’t look appealing and tasted weird, but the smell was repugnant. We barely tried it and left the whole dish uneaten. I have been to Japan and tasted both super cheap and mid priced restaurant food, and never encountered something that bad and smelly. The oyakodon was supposed to have chicken, egg and vegetables, and I specifically got it for the vegetables. As it turns out, some roughly chopped onion and a sprinkle of scallions constitute for vegetables. The whole dish was very bland and not appealing, though not nearly as bad as the sukiyaki. Lastly, we ordered plum wine and coffee to drink, and both were good. My impression is that maybe they don’t know how to cook, and the restaurant would benefit greatly if they stuck only to sushi. I do not recommend coming here for any other...