Umenoya (The Best Japanese Resto in the South???)

August 24, 2007

Umenoya (The Best Japanese Resto in the South???)

Umenoya, a japanese term for a flower is a popular Japanese Restaurant in Paseo de Sta. Rosa. It offers great selection of real tasty japanese cuisine. The best time to dine here is during lunch. Because it is only at lunch time that they offer the bento sets at affordable prices (starts at P200++). On other meal occasions you have to order a la carte style and you may find that some food are a bit over priced. We keep on coming back here and undoubtedly, the taste is consistently good. Unfortunately, we noticed that the service is deteriorating in quality. My colleagues and I recently dined here and we were so dismayed with the poor service rendered to us. We’ve been standing inside the resto for quite awhile waiting for a waiter to approach us and give us some seats. But all that we saw were crews running here and there at the top of their voices. For seconds, we thought we were given a market feel instead of a decent to say the least ambiance! When we were finally seated after making so much attempts to get the waiters' attention, we felt that the table is just not comfortable for a group of five. Therefore, we requested to be transferred to a new one, preferrably the "tatami room" since it's the only table available at that time. However, one of their crews told us that there's a minimum charge of P1500 for the room. Imagine, they have to compute for our bill first so they can decide if they will transfer us or not. It’s quite annoying really! We went there with our hungry stomachs and the least that we would expect (or any customer for that matter) is poor service. We feel that the 10% additional service charge is definitely not worth it. To think that the service charge is added on top of the tax, huh! Anyway, this is the first time that we experience this kind of treatment at Umenoya. Unless they do something to improve on their service, and had it not been for their food, surely I will never go back.