by Mystery Diner

The four pillars in any successful dining experience are the food, the service, the environment and consistency. You may think you’re only paying for the food, but you’re in fact paying for all of the above.

When Nozomi opened, it promised a certain level of these four pillars. It saddens us to say that on a recent visit, they came up short on two of them: service and consistency.

We had made reservations for six because we were desperately craving their crispy Crème brûlée balls. As we got comfortable, a grumpy waiter approached us. We weren’t sure whether it was the fact that we were the only table with expats, or the fact that we weren’t “highbrow” enough for them, but it was clear we were singled out for this kind of service.

We didn’t care at this point why he was particularly rude to us, but we figured he’d been dealing with uptight costumers all day so we made it our mission to get him to smile. After ordering a couple of appetizers and successfully getting a smile out of him, he adamantly insisted we order dessert later. Once we gobbled down our food with unparalleled speed we were ready for the main attraction: the dessert. It was at this moment the waiter chose to tell us that there was a limited supply of this dessert, exactly three left, which they had just served. They had pushed us away from ordering the dessert, the entire reason we were there, and intentionally neglected to tell us that it was in limited supply.

The crux of this entire scenario was that they had decided when we walked through the door that our repeat business was not as valuable as the rest. Our paranoia was affirmed when they purposely didn’t take our dessert order and let us sit there waiting for it. There was an underlying sense of “less than” that we tried to shake off and excuse, but it came back to bite us in the behind as they confirmed our suspicions.

What we’re trying to say here is this:

Dear Nozomi,

Please, don’t let your elitist attitude take away from your delicious food. If one or more of your four pillars are missing, you end up with an unstable fixture. And remember, a bill is a bill no matter who’s paying it.