Jury's Out for Japonais

Rob's cousin was in town this weekend and for her upcoming birthday she decided she wanted to go to Japonais for dinner. I've been before for drinks and knew the interior was spectacular, but was hesitant about the food. We've all had bad experiences where the place looks amazing, but the food is a dud. Well... I wouldn't classify Japonais as a dud, but I won't be rushing back anytime soon. First of all, our service was incredibly slow. Our waitress only came to our table about every 15 minutes if she wasn't serving food. The entire meal took three hours! We started with "The Rock" - an extremely hot rock that you personally cook finely sliced beef on. We thought it was a pretty cool presentation, and the meat was great, but none of us could quite shake the fact the entire place smelled like hot meaty rock for the rest of the evening. We opted for one roll and then ordered two entrees to save a little money. The price of one roll was about the same as a large salmon or chicken dish - so I definitely recommend heading straight to entrees. The entrees were good, not great, but came in large portions. One big disappointment for me were the martinis. Everyone raves about them, but when I order a martini, I expect to have some taste of alcohol. The martinis were only filled to about 3/4 of the small martini glass and honestly tasted non-alcoholic. There was so much mixer and so little vodka, it made me quite upset that I spent $13 and was basically served a shot of juice.

All in all, the ambiance is great, the interior is truly beautiful, but I would only suggest this one if you have a lot of money to spare. And if you don't, hopefully you'll have ordered enough $13 juice martinis that you won't care when the bill comes.