Brian L.
Yelp
It had been a while since my last visit to Ebesu, so I chose it for my birthday dinner, hoping for a great experience. Sadly, it turned out to be a major disappointment. I used to really enjoy this place, but the service this time was shockingly bad.
Our waitress took our order and then vanished. We didn't see her again until about an hour and half later when she returned -- just to drop off the check. Throughout the night, we had our waters refilled once at the very end. The whole table sat through the dinner with empty water glasses for pretty much the entire time.
We ordered a number of dishes. We started with the karaage, potatoes, and deluxe salmon roll. The karaage was a letdown -- the batter was slightly burnt and fell off with each bite. On the plus side, the potatoes and salmon roll were pretty good. The truffle mayo served with the potatoes was especially tasty. Our waiter told us we could request more if we liked -- which we did -- but he forgot to bring it.
Next came the tsukemen and Buri Shabu, and unfortunately, both were underwhelming. The tsukemen broth, which I normally love, was unbalanced with an overpowering taste of sake (?) and soy sauce. It didn't taste anything like how I remembered it. The Buri Shabu's broth was incredibly salty, although the yellowtail itself was cooked well and had decent flavor. The real issue was that the dipping sauce -- an essential part of the dish -- didn't arrive until we were down to our final slice of yellowtail, a full 25 minutes after it was served.
Strangely, none of the food was brought by our original waitress. A different server handled most of the food delivery and made repeated mistakes throughout the night.
To top it all off, someone at our table ordered the bacon scallops appetizer, which never arrived. It wasn't on the final bill, so it seems it was completely forgotten. At the end of the meal, we asked for a to-go box for our leftover yellowtail collar. The waiter kindly offered to pack it in the back and include ponzu sauce, but when we got it back, the ponzu was missing too.
Overall, while the staff was polite, the number of mistakes and lack of attentiveness ruined what should have been a special occasion.