INFINITY.

In Hawaii, food is an important hub of it’s culture and probably the second best conversation ice-breaker after establishing your identity through your high school. And so when “Tsukiji Fish Market and Restaurant” opened at Ala Moana Center’s Hookipa Terrace it was high on our list of “gotta try.” Two important factors were met immediately, the type of food: Japanese and the amount: buffet. Price would only determine “when” we’d eventually get there.

We drooled at photos from Ryan’s birthday and envied the rave reviews from our dear friends Heather, Janel and Kris; but this past weekend it was finally our turn. The commute was a bit challenging with the Christmas shopping traffic or are we so used to traffic on Oahu we just give it “names” like, “Friday traffic” or “Back to School traffic” or “UH football traffic”? We entered the maze or more commonly known as the Ala Moana Shopping Center parking lot and the rain began to drizzle a bit harder, so we figured that if we were going to spend that much on dinner what’s another five dollars for valet parking.

Our initial impression from the outside of the restaurant went unnoticed since we, were busy estimating the number of people ahead of us! The young host was obviously overwhelmed, whispering to some sort of manager, scratching out names on a tablet, and trying to figure out what appeared to be a layout of the restaurant’s tables. 45-minutes to an hour wait, and he’d call my cell phone to let me know when a table was ready. No problem since during the drive Lilinoe and I figured out that we had missed a few on our Christmas list. But, the type of person I am, I rushed the shopping to return with much time to spare, and luckily since a few parties ahead of us did not answer their cell phones or so we were told.

The atmosphere was “busy” but the fixtures and tables were elegant, and the aroma of the food was excellently inviting. As we customarily do when you have children, we eat in “shifts” so Lilinoe and Chelsea attacked made their way to the buffet line while Jayden and I played with a toy truck and shark. Being the great person that she is, Lilinoe quickly returned with a plate full of our favorite selection of nigiri style sushi. I won’t cross anything out, Jayden and I attacked the plate!

The rest of our evening was spent enjoying the flavors of tempura, sushi, steak, udon, and several legs of crab! I had never been impressed with the food at Makino Chaya’s, and Todai’s slowly began to disappoint me, so Tsukiji’s ranks first of the three.

But, we will not return unless the following has improved:

1. Organization. It took too many minutes for the host and manager to figure out where to seat each new party, even with a 2-way radio from someone on the floor. It shouldn’t be that difficult, if you’re organized.
2. Service. I don’t expect personalized attention, but I do expect a certain level of respectful kindness, especially towards my family. The server’s first words to me and Jayden, “What how many people here?” Believe it or not, it went down hill from there.
3. Tacky signs. Several of the signs identifying the dishes were hand-written on nothing more than a scratch piece of paper. How can you charge over $30 per plate, and yet not have enough in the marketing budget?

Despite those three items, of course we had an evening full of laughs and left with full stomachs, we can’t let those things get in the way of our family time. But, it will prevent us from returning.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 7:02 pm and is filed under RESTAURANTS., FAMILY., HAWAII., LIFE., SELF.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.