South Bay: Kubota

A family friend's daughter recently (well, not so recently now...I'm that behind) moved back to the Bay from Taiwan and she wanted to catch up over dinner.  She was in the mood for Japanese, so we let her pick the place since we didn't know Japantown all that well.

She decided on Kubota:


It had it's own private lot, which is rare for downtown San Jose, but it was full so we ended up having to find street parking anyway.  Luckily, it was the weekend of the Obon Festival, so the street right next to the restaurant was turned into a parking lot of sorts.

The decor inside was clean and colorful:


Despite the full parking lot, we didn't have to wait long to be seated.

My sister and I decided to split two rolls and an entree.  The entree came with a choice of soup or salad.  If you choose salad, you also get a choice of tofu or seaweed salad.  We went with seaweed:


Not quite what we were expecting, but not bad.  The seaweed had a good chew to it.

For our two rolls, we got the 49er roll ($7.50) and the New York roll ($7.50):


The 49er roll consisted of salmon and avocado while the New York roll was made of unagi and avocado.  Can you tell that we love avocado?  Both were decent, but nothing to write home about.

The chicken teriyaki ($14.50), on the other hand, was definitely worth a letter home:


Describing how bad it was.  In Chinese, there's a saying that when meat is overcooked, it's been cooked until it's dead.  Which was how this chicken tasted.  Dead.  It was so tough and dry that we could barely choke it down.

Thank goodness for rice and teriyaki sauce:


My mother got the chicken sukiyaki ($19.50):


Same problem with the chicken.  We all kind of picked around the chicken and just ate the veggies.

Final verdict?  Never going back to Kubota.  The food is pricey, but the cost doesn't reflect the quality of the dishes themselves, just the fancy plating.  No bento boxes here.


Kubota
593 N 5th St
San Jose, CA 95112
(408) 279-8440
http://www.kubotarestaurant.com/

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