As you can see, I’ve been keeping up with my explorations of Forest Hills on the weekends. So this past Sunday, before my friend’s birthday party, I took my BF over to Austin Street yet again… for his birthday lunch. (His birthday was the day before, and yes, I took him out that day as well!) Wandering by, I’d often seen this place and been curious about the “basement” level sushi joint. I happened to be skimming Chowhound the day before and saw someone mention it as less expensive than Narita around the corner, and not bad. Since I’ve yet to find a Japanese place in the area that I can see myself going to regularly (I like Chikurin over on 63rd Drive, but don’t always want to go in that direction; I’m much more likely to go east than west, if I’m dragging along the BF) or that was actually good (Sato, sadly, made me sick when I went a month or two ago; despite living only maybe an 8 minute walk away, I couldn’t make it back in time before I threw up all over someone’s bushes, sorry!), I was totally game.
Unfortunately… well, let me tell you about the food, and then the experience we had.
BF loves gyoza passionately. I enjoy it occasionally. While these were tasty, they were not very good gyoza, which is meant to have an extremely thin skin with a slight crust, a slight crispiness to them. These were way too doughy to be considered such. Bear in mind, I like dumplings of all kinds, but BF is very specific; when he orders gyoza, he wants gyoza. Though these weren’t even quite as doughy as a Chinese dumpling might be (especially a takeout one), the skin was definitely more dough than pastry. I would even dare to say 1/4″ thick, which is unacceptable for gyoza. If you don’t mind thicker skins, though, the inside meat was juicy and tasted fine.
BF wasn’t very hungry and opted to simply get the gyoza and the sushi starter appetizer ($7.95, three pieces of sushi). Though when it arrived – practically thrown onto our table, but I’ll get to that later – he commented it didn’t look fresh, he actually really enjoyed each piece. He’d tried to order fatty tuna, despite my warning that perhaps this is not the place to get it, but the waiter had simply said “We don’t have any.”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to eat, and, not having a standard first-time-order at Japanese restaurants of this kind, I opted to try their special rolls. This roll, the Oba Roll, had been advertised on the wall as “lobster salad inside with mango, and fried oba on top.” I had no idea what oba was, but it sounded yummy, so… As you can see (maybe), the oba is the green fried leaf thing on top, sitting on top of grilled onions as well. Luckily I like grilled onions, but a friend of mine (who has appeared on this blog – DD) hates onions and I think she’d have been right to be pissed had this occurred. When I’d ordered this roll, the waiter had looked at me, almost sneeringly, and said flatly, “That’s $13.95,” and I’d said that’s fine. I appreciated being alerted to the price, since it hadn’t stated on the chalkboard where the specials were listed, but I could do without being sneered at, thanks.
The spicy mayo drizzle was quite tasty, and as it turned out, though the oba tasted similar to a thinly sliced green bell pepper, the waitress told me it was a mint leaf, similar to shiso, though I found none of the pungency I taste in shiso (and therefor don’t like shiso usually). Overall, it was a very tasty roll, though the lobster seemed to be more tempura’d than salad, and in fact, didn’t have that much lobster. For all I could tell by looking, it was rock shrimp. I did think the flavors melded well together- with the sweetness from the mango countering the spiciness of the mayo, and it was yummy, but I don’t know about worth $13.95.
Not realizing how big the oba roll would be, I also ordered the roast duck roll, $10.95, one of the chef’s specials on an insert in the menu. Described as roast duck with cucumbers, wrapped in cucumber and drizzled with hoisin sauce, well, how do you go wrong with this? Almost like a Peking duck roll… without the crispy skin. Yummy. I was trying to force myself to finish by the end, though, it was a lot of food.
So basically, the food was all fine and passably good – interesting rolls to choose from, tasty, and the price is about the same as most Japanese places in the same category, not a cheap deal nor overwhelmingly expensive (though our Sunday lunch came to about $50 with a normal tip- I think I ordered too much; every other day of the week, there are lunch specials, which may be why the place wasn’t that crowded, it also had just opened at 1pm).
The big issue, or item of interest, was the service. We were the second table to be seated after they opened; the other table was a woman and her young son. After we were there for about 15 minutes, another table was seated, a group of people a little bit younger than us. From the moment the waiter came to take our order, however, to the moment we left, he was unconscionably rude to us. I couldn’t figure out why, since I’d never met him before, we’d never been to this restaurant, we didn’t do anything to him when we came in, we were our normal polite, courteous selves. We’ve both been in the service industry – he worked for years in a catering hall as a waiter, and managed the bar at which I waitressed/tended bar (which is how we met). We’re not the kind of people to piss the waitstaff off unknowingly.
As the meal wore on, with the waiter insisting on practically throwing every dish on the table, and throwing them right in front of me despite half of the dishes not being for me, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I did. I watched his interactions with the other tables, and he seemed fine; he didn’t throw the plates on the table nor was he bitingly rude.
I hatehatehate to do this, but I’m going to have to pull an odd race card on this one. Since I began dating my boyfriend five years ago now, I’ve been on the receiving end of enough dirty looks, angry glares, and accusing stares to kind of gauge when we’re being judged for being an interracial couple. I have gotten so many nasty looks from other Asian people with the “Traitor to your own kind” look. It’s kind of sad – I’m sorry to say but it is no one’s business but mine and his who we date and what race that person is!!! not even my own mother (who has never said anything negative about him regarding his race!) – that I would be judged so carelessly, so easily based on something that is really simply no one else’s business.
I do really hope that the service was only that bad because this waiter thought I was a traitor for dating outside “our” race (sorry I’m American buddy, and will date whomever I please, green, white, blue, black, orange, American or not). It got to the point where 1- my boyfriend, who has been hunting down tempura ice cream for years, refused to order this because it was uncomfortable with the waiter just being a d*ck, and 2- my lovely, generous, caring boyfriend who knows how sucky it is to work for tips actually told me I was leaving too much tip when I left my usual more-than-15%. I sincerely hope that maybe that waiter happened to have been left by his (Asian) girlfriend for a white guy, and that’s why he was so angry… and that his service is usually not so awful. I would really like to go back and try some of their other interesting rolls, but it seems like for now, I’ll either have to stick to delivery or leave the boyfriend at home.
Yvo says: I really liked the interesting choices for rolls that they had – there were many others with ingredients I don’t normally see in sushi rolls at other restaurants. I would love to go back and try them, but I can’t fully recommend this place as the service was just that bad, and the food simply wasn’t outstanding enough for me to attempt to overlook that issue.
rolls are interesting, service too bad to recommend
Mimi says
sounds like you had a hell of a time. I too used to be in the service industry and believe in blessing the tip gods and am always generous with my tips, but bad service is bad service and I think it may have been a race issue… It happens in the least likely of ways.
Rochelle says
🙁
You deserve so much better.
miss janie says
how terrible! i like sushi just fine, but i’ll be sure to avoid patronizing this restaurant at all costs because of the way they treated you.
Marie says
It’s so unfortunate that your server behaved that way! Unbelievable, whatever his reasons may have been.
blahsayblah says
Maki Maki a Japanese restauraunt in Irvine Spectrum (in Southern California) has really really good tempura green tea icecream. If you are ever in that area, you should try there tempura green tea icecream. <:
John says
this place is good for a quick fix, but i wouldn’t come here if i wanted sushi.
SkippyMom says
Shame on that waiter. I don’t give a rat’s butt [ahem] if his girlfriend left him for Bill Clinton – throwing plates and being disrespectful earns him a complaint to his management and much, MUCH smaller tip.
I, too, used to be in the waitressing biz and it is true that you have to fit your demeanor to that of your customers – but the way in which you treat your guests better be a whole hell of a lot better than sneering and throwing stuff because he simply decided [without provocation] that he disliked you. He won’t be long for the waitering world.
You know I adore you, but don’t you ever reward surly service with a decent tip [again] – it simply confirmed, to him, that what he was doing was okay and it wasn’t…this is SkippyMom….lol 😀