Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Izakaya Chuji

Location: 165 Lonsdale Street
Link: www.izakayachuji.com
Cuisine: Japanese, Tapas, BBQ
Company: Jie, Jenn, Mel, Emma, Helen

~Food~
The food was rather average. I suspect BBQ would have been nicer, but given it was a very hot day, we went a la carte with a stack of small tapas-like dishes. A few dishes stood out, including the asari butter (clam in butter soup) and the crab croquettes. Amusingly, the description for sukiyaki was 'a very popular dish served in pot with special sauce', although it didn't quite live up to expectations. It merely tasted like sukiyaki from any other Jap restaurant.

~Atmosphere and Service~
When we arrived at about 6pm, it was already starting to look busy. Downstairs was more crowded and had a market-like atmosphere. Upstairs was a little quieter and more restaurant like. Lighting was slightly dimmed and the place had character.

Unfortunately for the place, the service was shocking. The waiters and waitresses could barely understand English, which made communication a bit of a problem. Our first issue arose when we decided it was too hot for BBQ and opted to order from the main menu. We asked one waitress whether it was possible to order a la carte instead of BBQ, and asked for the main menu. Given that she left and returned with the menus, we assumed it would be okay. Not quite so. Another waitress later came up and told us off for not ordering BBQ when we had booked for BBQ. That would have been fair enough if they had told us when we asked. Instead they then complained about us taking up a BBQ table when they had to turn away people who wanted BBQ - despite there still being a few empty BBQ tables around us...

~Price~
The prices seemed quite cheap when we first looked at the menu, but the dishes were all rather small and after paying $20 each, we left rather unsatisfied.

~Overall Impression~
Would perhaps return to try out the Jap BBQ, but other than that, not particularly keen to return.

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