Christmas Eve at Haru

I don’t have anything to work on for the rest of the day, so I thought I’d do a retroactive post. On Christmas Eve, my friend Abbey and I ate at the Haru in Times Square. I found the food to be just so-so and the service to be, well, poor. Which begs the question, despite my many protestations, am I a service snob? I really never thought I was, but lately I feel like I can’t stop complaining about bad service. Am I just growing more difficult and persnickety in my old age? Or is the general state of the service industry just really as abysmal as I perceive it to be? To be honest, I’m not sure which option I’d prefer as they both sort of suck, though I guess I’d prefer the former as I have some modicum of control over that one.

The tastiest thing I had at dinner was the Rum Punch, which is described on their menu as rum, fruit juice and more rum. It was a fairly accurate description as I felt totally sozzled after just two drinks (if you know me, you know that I typically have about 17 drinks in one sitting). To start we ordered the Chilean sea bass yakitori (though we were initially served the yakitori trio, comprised of chicken, filet mignon and salmon, which we had to send back as Ab is a strict pescatarian) and the king crab dumplings. Both tasted fine, but left me feeling pretty under-whelmed.

For dinner I ordered two pieces of sashimi for each of the following: yellowtail, Spanish mackerel, fluke and then just one piece of salmon. But instead of what I ordered, the waiter brought me three pieces of yellowtail and zero pieces of salmon. He insisted that he had brought me the salmon and I politely told him that I could tell the difference between yellowtail and salmon, that I would pay for what he brought me, but still wanted a piece of salmon. When we got the bill, I noticed that it was all messed up, but as it was Christmas Eve, did not mention it and still left an overly generous tip (roughly 30%).

Anyway, as far as expensive NYC sushi goes, I really do not recommend Haru. But perhaps I am judging it unfairly as I had just eaten at Sushi Yasuda (still waiting for pictures to post write-up – WHHIIIZZZZUUUPPP MATT?) two nights before. All other NYC sushi pales in comparison, so I guess the juxtaposition of the meals was rather cruel to Haru.