For thirty four years my wife, I and over many years our extended aamily of up to ten persons enjoyed what probably was the best Japanese food in Orange County. Especially, the freshness, taste and generous portions of fish in sushi and shashimi preparations, often...very fanciful and inventive, were famous. During weekday nights, one could easily find the bar (after a wait of up to an hour!) settled with many frequent customers who came there over decades and travelled significant distances to enjoy Taiko’s superior sushi and shashimi dishes. The service was always friendly and the customer came first. The exceedingly outdated ambiance was part of the charm of the place.
That high level came gradually to an end, when the previous owners sold their restaurant for an astronomic amount to a Japanese owned-chain with over 400 restaurants in Japan). First the prices went up by a quarter by dish per year (which one could still live with), then due to a lot of new servers who were unfamiliar with the capabilities of the sushi chefs or were downright and visibly disinterested came on board. That did not improve the service.
But the final blow for us came when one night my wife correctly observed that the famously generous fish portions had visibly shrunk to a meager average, and at the same time prices were jacked up so much that no longer there was any reasonable price-performance proportion. Service by our waitress was unattantive (one must admit she may have been overworked) and a complaint to the Manager just resulted in a friendly apology, but not in a gesture for us, the longstanding customers we were. I am sad that apparently a tradition came to an end for no other reason than greed and ‘corporate instructions’ ( the Japanese chain has about 400 restaurants in Japan). Shame on them , we probably will not go back. The good old Taiko died.More