The Kintaro is a comfortable japanese restaurant in Cologne's "Friesenviertel". There's a couple of tables, mostly for four to five people; there's even a special table on tatami mats for Japanese customers (although I'm wondering to get a spot there as a native.) It's possible to make a table reservation.
Good things first: the quality of the food is superb. Everything tastes great, is ideally prepared and just right - as you'd expect from good Japanese cooks. I could go on about the food, but it'd be mere repetition of this fact.
But cutting the praise short leads to me to tell the tale of what's bad about this restaurant: the service. A minor downpoint would be that you can't expect getting Japanese staff unless you're Japanese yourself. You'll have to take preference with staff that can be easily identified as locals. But ordering went fast enough, even though we at first only had two menus to divide among the five of us. The serving order of the menu was well-organized; we varied among the available menu choices, without special orders, and got our courses (with one exception: the main course's beef came before most other's sushi) all at the same time.
But that's the end of the positive part in serving: we had practically no chance to order something when they weren't at our table and serving new courses. In the end, we tried to get the attention of the waitress, or rather, of any staff at all, without resorting to shouting, but it was to no avail. I didn't really track the time, but after about thirty minutes, we finally managed to get hold of the Japanese waitress - but only because she was cleaning up the table next to us, and even then we had to go short of physical assault to raise attention. VERY negative.
The pricing was, with regard to above facts, a mixed affair. The quality of the food was very great, thus justifying a higher price, but the quality of service ranged on the abysmal. So the price is barely acceptable, saved merely by the food.
There's one thing left to look at which I usually use to judge the authenticity of a Japanese restaurant: the green tea. A rather simple drink (when regarding sencha), yet it can make all the difference. The tea at the Kintaro was of good quality; neither did it go stale anytime soon nor was it too bitter after a couple of minutes. And, very important: refills were on the house. Getting a tea itself wasn't for free, though, which was a bit disappointing.
All in all, if you're ashamed to get loud and ask for service like in a lowly bar, it's a very good Japanese restaurant. read more