Ichiban Restaurant

A short walk from our hotel, our small group ventured over to Ichiban for one of our project experiences. To sum it up, we did have to wait for a few minutes for a table and then service was fairly slow for both drink and food orders, though we were warned of a backup in the kitchen. Thankfully, we were the last group to be seated before they started a wait.

On average, it took us about 15 minutes for our waters to arrive and about 45 minutes for food to arrive after we placed our orders. While this wasn’t necessarily fast service as we would expect it back home, it didn’t seem to be an unreasonable amount of time as we were able to easily fill it with good conversation.

All of our orders came out correct, though we did have to wait about an additional 20 minutes for our last appetizer to arrive which came just as we finished the other appetizers.

Overall, this was a fairly positive experience as we weren’t distracted much by the poor service and slow times because the quality of the food was excellent and we able to converse which easily passed the time. 

To improve the service, I would recommend the restaurant train wait staff to encourage them to keep checking on tables that have been waiting for a long time. Having open communication about the status of their meals and drinks would help ease feelings of being forgotten or being neglected. 

This is something we witnessed as one table seemed very annoyed trying to get a waiters attention after sitting without food or drink for a very long time. Another table had to consistently pull waiters over to see where their drinks were or ask for water refills.

Having the wait staff engage with the customers should help alleviate these problems so they won’t be left in the dark waiting for their orders.

Something else I would recommend they do to improve their service would be to have a manager present and walking around when the restaurant is busy. With a senior level person walking around interacting with customers, they will see that they are cared about and not forgotten. Being a person with authority, the manager would hopefully be able to ease concerns with the customers to enhance their experience despite having to wait longer than usual.