Charlie E.
Yelp
I've been going to this place for about 15 or 20 years and it has been going downhill for the last few years. Let's start with the glory days when it was innovative, fresh and showcased great quality seafood with a little San Francisco flair. They had friendly staff and a buzzing happy hour with great bar food. The place had a real sense of liveliness with a great tempo, if that makes sense.
Skip to last Thursday, 2/22/24. Nobody to greet us at the door and when we were met by a staff member, we waited while they pondered (for quite some time) which of the 7 open tables to seat us at, when the decision was made he simply pointed, no escort to the table, just pointed. He was busy, he wasn't the host and I got it, no biggie. QR code menu that took a while for my dining partner to reach and we were away.
We were hungry and we sensed the server was a little in the weeds so we ordered a bunch of stuff. Edamame, gyoza and tempura came out fairly promptly, they were nice. The food runner had a very hectic energy about him and was efficacious. They were busy, apparently but when I looked around they had empty tables and those tables with patrons had their food, busy?
Not long after the rest of the food arrived and I mean ALL of it. We still had the first 3 dishes on the table. The food runner started putting down the food on the table. It was obvious that it wasn't all going to fit but that didn't stop him trying. Just as he was about to start stacking plates on top of each other on the table my friend said "stop, what are you doing?" The food runner rolled his eyes and "well there's no more room, what else am I supposed to do?" I told him perhaps he could try to stagger the food so it's not, literally, piled on the table.
"We are short staffed" came the reply. No attempt to amalgamate the appetizer plates to make room for the buffet of food he had in his hands. Fortunately he didn't bring the pork katsu as we were balancing plates already. We told him not to bring anything else for the table till we have eaten at least some of the food we had. We will often over order with the anticipation of taking some home.
The overcrowded table made the dining experience awkward.
On to the food, remember when I said this place used to be fresh and innovative? Yeh no. Gyoza, edamame and tempura were all good. However the same cannot be said about the rest of it. The tuna sashimi was obviously quick thawed and the texture was mealy and it was pretty much flavorless. The hamachi was also blah. The sushi rolls looked like they had been rolled by an intern on their first day, the rice didn't go all the way around and therefore they fell apart. Any fried ingredients in the sushi rolls lacked any crunch which indicated it had been cooked earlier in the day. The miso was very good. We had to hail a server to get some wasabi and ginger.
As the table next to us was paying their bill, we overheard them say they received a pork katsu that they didn't order. It had been cooked and served when the rest of our food was served. Sounded like the food runner was too afraid to let the kitchen know we wanted to pace our meal a little and just dumped on to someone else.
Enough, check please and it better not include a pork katsu.
$160, for our food and a large bottle of iced tea. Yeh I tipped 10%. I NEVER tip less than 15-25%, I guess I can't say that any more.
The whole experience was very disappointing and marks our last trip to the once fabulous Moshi Moshi.
PS, they weren't that busy at any stage of the meal.