Juju is a pedestrian but affordable neighborhood Japanese restaurant, convenient for Rangnam’s residents, probably best ignored by the rest of us. The owner is Japanese, and the waitresses can take orders from his countrymen without too much difficulty. But an authentic Nippon pedigree isn’t enough to guarantee quality. The food isn’t particularly fresh and the occasional misfires in the service can get annoying (no sake on one visit, a simple grilled dish that took forever on another). If it weren’t for the friendly, net prices, we’d probably be tougher on Juju. Can one complain about the sauce being a tad sweet, the miso watery or the rice floury when the saba (mackerel) set is only B120? Heck, come for lunch and sets are B99. But rather than full-on meals, Juju probably works best as a drinking place, an izakaya. Even when they’ve run out of sake (300ml), there’s still sochu (600 and 720ml). To go with the rice wines, pick from a variety of grilled seafood. We like the sishamo (three small, fried fish), and the big prawns are OK. But nothing is ever that fresh, and on our last visit the scallops were simply unacceptable: sad, dry and even a tad fishy. If you’d like to go raw, there are two sushi sets that are equally sub-standard: acidic, almost bitter tuna, rubbery squid, a load of surimi, etc. In fact, even the colors are off: fluorescent green wasabi, salmon pink ginger, glowing red tuna probably treated with carbon dioxide (it won’t kill you but it explains why the fish doesn’t taste nearly as fresh as it looks). As for the decor, it looks like someone’s cramped studio-unit: cheap shelves and cupboards, crates of beer and random junk. In fact, the namesake okonomiyake, could sum up Juju in one dish: affordable, filling pancakes that don’t exactly lay claim to fine dining but can soak up a bottle of Kuro Kirishima without costing the earth. Corkage B300.
