Eric B.
Yelp
Stephen S nailed it in his review. The experience is well sculpted, it's a very intimate experience, but the food is just, meh. Beautifully presented but not well thought through. You keep waiting for each aesthetically pleasing bite to ignite your senses, but it never comes. The seasoning is either ham-fisted or absent, the cooked food is oily and the fresh food is awkward in its conception and ultimately lacks both depth and complexity. We were utterly disappointed since we so wanted to be wowed, and we just weren't. Ultimately the service was well-intentioned and earnest but not great at predicting our obvious needs (like more to drink or the expectation they might actually come when summoned via their unique call button).
One core issue, this might sound strange, is that this place is actually too inexpensive to be good. To really deliver, they would need to fly in fish from Japan, but they clearly don't. I ended up giving them 3 stars instead of 2 because the price is fairly reasonable for the experience. But ultimately one is left with the feeling that it is pretentious to try to do some kind of modern interpretation of high end Japanese here, without some serious bona fides. To truly perfect traditional Japanese food in Berlin would be a great thing. To attempt to refine it ends up feeling crude and rather misguided.
