is sure does look good, but does it TASTE good?

On Sunday I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in ages, Chigusa. We ate at a little Italian restaurant (in Tsukuba Q't mall) with a great view, er sort of, does a bus terminal count? Portofino（イタリアン - Italian）was the name of the place. For the number of customers, they had far too many servers. The servers were for the most part, attentive, except when they wanted us out and finally stopped giving us water refills. Oops, our bad.

The daikon salad I ordered was DROWNING in a pool of salad dressing. I'm being generous when I am saying drowning. Japanese daikon, or white radish, is usually white in color and tends to absorb whatever sauces it is subjected to. All the shredded daikon on my plate turned a ruddy brown - icky. Not visually pleasing at all.

After I'd eaten the salad, I told the waitress that in the future the salad dressing should be on the side because my salad was way too strong, nevertheless, she didn't seem to heed my sugar-coated complaint. Back in the States the restaurant may have apologized sincerely and perhaps take it off the bill, not so in my case. Oooh, a crappy (excuse my language, when it comes to food, I'm serious) salad for 7-dollars...grrrrrrr.

The tiramisu may have well been called, "big mass of whipped cream with a sliver of chocolate cake doused in a wee bit of liquor." Again, very disappointing. Hmm, don't think I will be going back there again.

We often remember good food...but even more than that, we remember bad food or poor service! Restaurants don't have it easy. If a customer has one poor experience with food, it's likely they will suffer from food aversion and never come back. I know I will never go back to JOURNAL Cafe, even though I'm not sure if it was the exact reason for my 12-hour stomach flu. Again, it's not easy in the restaurant/cafe business.