Stephen "mavjop" J.'s Profile

The food was fairly tasty, but the service was ... well, beyond belief.

I was there with a group of about 20 people from work.

We ordered.

We waited over an hour.

One of our managers went up to ask, um, what was up with the food. They told her that there was "a computer problem" and only half of the food orders made it from the computer the server entered it into to the computers at the stations in the kitchen. When she asked did this mean half of our food was sitting there getting cold, they said no it was all being remade (ok, fine, sounds fair enough)... but they did not seem to be particularly concerned about this and seemed to think that the computer issue meant it wasn't their fault and thus not their problem.

During this time, some people at one end up the table had their glasses refilled, but many of us sat there with empty glasses for over 20 minutes and we ran out of bread. Nobody seemed to care to check up on us at all.

20 more minutes passed and food began to arrive. All but one person (ironically, the one who'd made the reservation and had gone up to talk to them) got their food. The last plate arrived a *further* 10 minutes or so later.

I would have expected that after they realized they'd screwed up in a big way they would have been extra-attentive. I would have expected a manager to come over and apologize profusely and keep checking in and making sure that servers were keeping us happy. Nope. They showed up once to refill glasses after it was pointed out to them that nobody had checked up on us in a long time, then proceeded to ignore us almost completely.

At the end of the meal (actually, around the time the last plate showed up), a manager came over and told us there would be no charge. That really was the only possible way they could rectify such a completely awful service experience. ... but even as she was saying there would be no charge, she was pointing out that the computer issue was not their fault and did not sound in the least bit apologetic to my ears. It felt like we were meant to be wowed by their amazing generosity so they didn't have to care/try any further.

Ignoring the fact that the server or manager or ... someone ought to have recognized that a problem existed far sooner (hey, why have these 20 people been sitting there waiting for food for an hour?) and even if we let them off the hook and blame the computer, it was still their responsibility and they should have owned that. No matter how much you comp your guests, treating them like they're unimportant is not going to make them happy.

Little Potato's prices would be good even if the dishes were a single serving, but in fact each dish is about enough to serve 3. Everything we have had is tasty, with the lotus-wrapped sticky rice (sort of like *gigantic* nor ma gai or dong) being especially excellent. I recommend the garlic one with chicken. The "shanghai-style rice vegetable with salted pork" is also very good. Very much like home cooking in a good way.

We were dubious about another Chinese-run Japanese restaurant, having had a truly terrible experience at "Miso" on Mowry recently, but it is so close to home that we decided to go in with an open mind and give them a chance.

I'll start right off with saying that the experience was not bad at all. Not *great* but not bad.

Also (completely the opposite of Miso!), the service was really good, and this was with far smaller staffing. Yep, just one waitress and I do believe another reviewer was correct in saying she looked to be pregnant. I am impressed that she manages to be so attentive and friendly.

We, like another reviewer, were slightly perturbed by the water with floating bits of something in it, but we too realised when we saw the waitress go to refill glasses that the bits were from the lemon slices in the water jug.

The chicken karaage was so-so. It is a dish which has the potential to be anywhere from unpalatable to awesome. This was a firm ok. It was a little tough and just a touch dry but not gristly (yay!) and I enjoyed it with my impromptu dipping sauce of nanami togarashi, chili oil and soy sauce.

The miso grilled lamb chop was quite nice, but ... weird. The lamb was tasty, but the miso was not the flavour at the forefront (even after the lamb). My wife said she thought it was more of a Chinese preparation. I don't think of miso as Chinese, but ... I could see what she meant. It was covered in green bits which I think were shredded shiso leaf which really changed the flavour.

The pork with curry over rice was quite tasty, but the curry was somehow lacking ... something. Maybe something as simple as a little touch of salt. I enjoyed it nonetheless. The sliced tonkatsu was not fantastic but was nice. The shredded pickled ginger really made the curry seem better.

My wife had a spicy tuna maki, hamachi (nigiri) and hotate (nigiri). In addition, they brought us a free sake (nigiri). The sushi was presented very nicely, though she would have preferred the hotate (scallop) without the sauces. The sushi was, as I understand it, decent, but she was concerned about the person who made the sushi not being Asian at all, let alone Japanese, and not looking like a trained sushi chef (what trained sushi chef wears a pink polo shirt?).

All in all ... it was tasty enough that I would go back, perhaps for a curry lunch or something. If it were 10 miles from home, not likely, but since it is more like 1 mile away and since there's not a lot of Japanese food to be had near home, I can see myself going. The friendly, efficient service definitely helps too.

Oh, and in finishing a few comments:

(1) they were happy to shift things around a little to fit our stroller beside the table and were very baby/child friendly;

(2) when we first tried to go, like another reviewer mentioned, the restaurant was confusingly, randomly, closed that night with a hand-written sign in the window saying so -- not great for a new restaurant claiming 7-day operation, but luckily we didn't drive far to get there. This time we called ahead to make sure they would be open;

(3) I personally had neither Sushi nor Noodles. Hm. Does that lessen the relevance of my review? I just can't bring myself to order Ramen at a restaurant which is not a Ramenya and wasn't in the mood for Udon;

(4) Lastly, I seriously debated what star rating to give. I *want* to give them 3 stars, but the little Yelp star descriptions make me think it's more of a 2.5 and not quite a 3 (but with the potential to attain a 3 with not too much improvement, I think). Should I round up or round down? I erred on the side of caution rather than mathematical accuracy in giving them a 2.

I wasn't sure if it'd be worth the hype, but now that I have been I can say it really was awesome.

The brown sugar with ginger caramel swirl is amazing. I had it along with the also wonderful coffee toffee and honey lavendar in a bowl. Extremely tasty!

The salted caramel ice cream is also wonderful. It is quite thick and very, very richly flavoured.

The mint chip is extremely tasty, but BEWARE! It is *peppermint* with chocolate chips, not regular mint with chocolate chips. My wife was highly disappointed about this because she loves mint ice cream, but not peppermint ice cream.

Dustin and Aimee really have a great eye for framing a shot and great talent for capturing wonderful moments and expressions. They took photos of our daughter at age roughly 2 months old and the results were *amazing*. They are photos we will treasure always.

The restaurant has stylish, subdued and pretty decor. It is a pity that is all it has going for it.

Service was sadly lacking.

Our server was polite, but that is where any positives about the service ended.

The staff were very inattentive. We had to spend some time trying to flag someone down even though there were several staff visible and almost no customers. It took over *20 minutes* and asking *4 times* to get water. Thereafter, nobody looked to see if maybe the water needed refilling. Our server was clearly not Japanese, and the other staff were speaking Cantonese when not speaking English (and did not understand trivial Japanese).

The food was pitiful.

Agedashi Tofu is generally hard to get wrong, but while it looked tasty and the crispy tempura batter seemed promising, the batter had an objectionable floury taste and texture. The dish was otherwise somewhat devoid of flavour. I'm not entirely sure how you manage that with Agedashi Tofu. It was unpleasant enough that I left 3/4 of it and even after eating and drinking other things I could feel the floury texture in my mouth.

Sukiyaki looked good upon arrival -- a large portion of what appeared to be fresh vegetables, slices of beef and a raw egg floating in it (which I broke up and mixed in using the spoon). Unfortunately, they apparently failed to realise that sukiyaki is meant to start with a flavourful broth. As near as I could tell, they simply used water. So, it was flavourless. The beef was alright but definitely not good enough to take being cooked in nothing but eggy water. It was hugely disappointing.

The sushi my wife had was bland and forgettable, with the exception of the spicy tuna roll, which was significantly too spicy and otherwise uninteresting.

The free edamame weren't terrible, but were cold.

The one thing we had that was half-way decent was the seabass misoyaki. It was quite tasty. Not *great*, but I would venture as far as reasonably good. It was a pity that they added crispy fried ... something (noodles? incredibly thin shredded potato?) on top. It tasted only of "fried too far" and took away from the subtle texture and flavour of the seabass. Once scraped off the top, though, the fish was quite enjoyable. At $7.50, however, it was an extremely anemic portion (about 2" square).

We turned down the free ice cream because we just wanted to leave.

The prices were somewhat high, but would be appropriate for a really good sushi restaurant. This is most assuredly NOT a good sushi restaurant.

When our bill arrived, they had forgotten to remove an item which they had come and told us they were out of earlier in the meal. Upon being informed of this, they did remove it from the bill, but it took them quite a while to do so.

I left hungry and distinctly unsatisfied.

Two vehement thumbs down.

EDIT: I have since returned to The Refuge for lunch and the pastrami sandwiches (the reuben especially) are really very good. I am, thus, increasing my rating from 2 stars to 3. I would give 4 or 5 stars based on the reuben and fries, but since you really have to stick to those items and *avoid* the charcuterie or insanely overpriced foie gras, I can't bring myself to give them a higher star rating. Order the right thing and you will be a happy camper, though.

----- Original review below:

I've been told that the beer selection is awesome (I'm not a beer drinker) and that the pastrami and in particular the reuben are wonderful, but when my wife and I went to The Refuge for dinner we had foie gras and charcuterie.

The foie gras was priced as high as any top-class restaurant but while ok was not fantastic, and was smaller than any other restaurant portion. Definitely a supremely bad deal.

The charcuterie was uninspired, IMHO. The pastrami rilette was the one really interesting thing on there (it was really rather good). Everything else was disappointing compared to charcuterie at other places I've had such things (often much cheaper elsewhere), and the portions were stingy, annoying given the premium charcuterie prices.

I do plan to go back (to try the reuben), but I wouldn't order charcuterie again, and no way in heck would I touch the foie gras.

I may revisit my rating after I've tried the reuben.

I love Santa Ramen.

I love places that do something and do it really well, rather than trying to do everything. At Santa Ramen, they know how to make good ramen (their Tonkotsu is particularly excellent), and they stick to almost only that.

You can add tamago (boiled egg) as a topping, and you can add a side of chicken karaage (which is truly fantastic, and small enough that you can eat it and eat your ramen) over rice at lunch time. They call this (ramen + karaage) a "lunch set".

They serve the best ramen in the Bay Area, in my opinion. To get better, you have to go to Shin-Sen-Gumi (http://www.shinsengumi...) in the LA area.

I went here in order to fill up a card (had to visit 8 different ramen restaurants, and for that would get 1 free ramen at any of them), and was more than unimpressed. The food was just plain bad. The place was full of flies. I was unable to finish my meal. Left not feeling good. I strongly recommend against going to Ramen Club.

I am absolutely stunned by Elaine T.'s scathing review. She obviously had some unfortunate aspects to her experience, but one bit of the review stuck out for me. She ranted that the egg was "undercooked" ("Health code violation?", she queries). Has Elaine ever ordered an egg "over-easy" or "sunny-side up"? Eggs where the yolk is not cooked to the point of solidity are not, I'm pretty sure, a health code violation. The soft-boiled egg is one of the things I really like about Himawari. Most ramen restaurants do their tamago hard-boiled. Now I'm hungry, just talking about this. I'll have to go to Himawari tonight and get tamago in my ramen. :-)

My favourite type of ramen at Himawari is the miso ramen. It is rich and tasty. Yum. The chasyu (sliced roast pork) is average/good, the buta kakuni (stewed side of pork) is excellent and succulent if occasionally a little bit overly fatty (usually not a problem), the noodles are pleasant.

I'm not as keen on their tonkotsu broth (broth made by stewing pork bones). It's not by any means bad. Don't get me wrong. It is less exciting, for me, than their miso broth, however. If I want tonkotsu, I'll go to Santa Ramen, also in San Mateo, or (even better, though the 360+ miles trip from San Jose makes it a little less easy to go to) Shin-Sen-Gumi in LA. Himawari's tonkotsu ramen often comes with thinner noodles than their other broths. This it not the only place I've come across this practice.

In addition to standard ramens, they also have interesting things like a ramen with a snow crab omelet on top. Really quite unusual, and rather good!

Himawari's Buta Kakuni _appetizer_ (which is stewed side of pork that has then been deep fried and then served with a broth [pretty basic dashi], chinese mustard and negi [green onions]!) is fantastic. They also have rather good agedashi tofu. I've heard that their chicken karaage is good, but I have yet to try it (FYI, Santa Ramen in San Mateo and Sakae Sushi in Burlingame have _outstanding_ Chicken Karaage).

In summary, this place is really rather a good ramen restaurant!