the worst front of house staff. the sushi chefs were very professional, made excellent food and presented it with the same upstanding standard. my fiance and i work in a restaurant and understand the rigors of the industry. the wait staff and what we soon learned was the manager of the restaurant was most unprofessional, rude and at the last, confrontational! at first, one particular member of the staff argued with the sushi chef mike ( who was the best,, bar none ) when mike told her that she was being rude to her customers when the gentleman was dissatisfied with some issue, less than one foot from us no less. a direct quote from the employee to mike was " he said he didn't even want to discuss the issue any further." this is a revealing detail, the importance of which will be revealed momentarily. mike tried to remind her of the obvious, that contradicting the customer is basically bad business, and she held firm that she was in the right, the customer was not. not long after this, we could hear a woman and two others in street clothes bad mouthing customers at the table directly behind the bar where we were enjoying the food itself. the discussion was so distinct, the woman's tone so clear and strident that it actually was bothersome. it continued for some time. my fiance and i feel that the inevitable bitching that occurs when working in the service industry should be done away from the ears of the remaining customers. the wait station was within view and would have been more appropriate, as was any number of places as this is a small restaurant with several immediately available nooks to allow for unloading frustrations. this was loud and virulent enough to make us uncomfortable and when we asked mike ( the sushi chef) who the manager was, he indicated the it was the loudest woman of the trash-talking table. we were baffled. mike got her attention, she came our seats. my fiance praised mike and his immediate staff, then explained that he was put out by the conduct at her table behind us. she laughed at him, said "well...," then returned to the table she was at initially to continue the same behavior. while we were amazed at the manager's lack of receptiveness to a our very real concern, the same aforementioned perturbed waitress decided to take it upon herself to approach us and argue that we were wrong in our perceptions, that she "would hate to have us think anything bad about the restaurant", tried to justify the tables behavior, then when my finace began to reinstate our rationale, she chose to disengage as abruptly. we were then presented a bill, which we still wrote for a 20 percent gratuity to the waitress, tipped mike generously, as he indicated he agreed with our perceptions of the goings- on and seemed sheepish to say the least about the substandard behavior of his co-workers. our server offered us a complementary hot saki " if we wanted it: which would have been roughly 6 percent of the total bill minus the tip;
this was our first and last visit to this restaurant. it came recommended, but after visiting and experiencing it as two people in the same industry, i will never recommend it to anyone else. it was so stunningly bad with respect to its management and service that i will endeavor to pass along this negative word of mouth to any receptive ear. bad shifts happen to all strata in a restaurant, but this was deplorable. the manager is not fit to manage, the server is not fit to serve even in this low volume restaurant, and the chef mike should take the helm if he were willing.