Kiku is a Giant Clusterf#(k

Wow, I’ve never been to a more poorly run restaurant in my life than Springfield’s new Kiku restaurant. And I’m not exaggerating. It really is number one on my list. On Valentine’s Day, Mrs. TEH and I went there without reservations and were turned away. They told us we needed reservations. OK, fair enough, we went elsewhere.

This past week, we tried to make reservations there for a group of us who often go out together and were told they no longer take reservations. OK, fair enough. So we get there Saturday night and put our name in. We were told by the manager that he can’t figure out how to do reservations right and he really has no idea how long the wait is, but he says expect to wait 90 minutes.

We head into the “bar” only to find out that the bartender had called in sick and there was no one to serve drinks. So the place is a giant waiting area where the restaurant is losing a fortune on people who would otherwise be buying drinks. Due to the long wait time, several in our party headed next door to Mariah’s to drink at their bar. Apparently, a lot of people were doing this that night.

I ran into one person who was told there was a 90 minute wait, put his family’s name in and then left for half an hour. When he came back, he was told his name had already been called and he was put on the bottom of the list again.

Several of us stayed in the non-serving bar to hold our spot on the list. I noticed on the walls of the bar were the old cables that once ran to TVs when the place was a sports bar. Not only had the new management not replaced the TVs, but they had left the wiring just randomly coming out of the wall. Soon I noticed that every once in a while someone could actually talk one of the waitresses into getting them a drink, but those opportunities were few and far between. I felt like I was in some third world bar where service and product were only intermittently available.



After about 90 minutes, we noticed that people who came in after us (and farther down on the seating list) were getting seated. Apparently, the same genius manager decided he would continue to seat the parties of two or three or even five and not mess with us because there were ten of us. So we all walked out and went elsewhere. (Well, some of us were already elsewhere - Mariah’s). I don’t expect to be back anytime soon.