Sushi Jiro Carousel — Restaurant in Cannington

Please be cautious of their halal certificate, don't let it fool you. Be cautious and take responsibility of what you are eating...

An outing with muslim friends, and they love sushi, so how lovely to have a sushi train restaurant that caters to them with a halal certificate... So I thought.

Upon arrival, first impressions were good. Nothing to complain about. A nice local sushi train restaurant, with a nice atmosphere and seats, and various menu choices. However, things slowly took a turn when the waiter came up to us and asked me, "would you guys like the halal soy sauce instead?" iNsTeAd!?!?

Taken aback, I of course said yes... Confused, I then asked if there was a non-halal soy sauce I should worry about. That is when the waiter pointed at the tabletop dispenser with a red lid, to which she replied, "oh that's actually the non-halal one", and quickly snatched it away from our table... At this point, I am baffled and very sceptical if I should have brought my friends here in the first place... We were then, given a paper cup filled with soy sauce packets, with green lids.

We moved on... Their sushis were really nice, although their nigiri sushi rice ball portion could have been a bit more than what it was. Their mochi was fantastic, no negatives. Their fried selection was questionable as they were dry and cold from the waiting at the train. Like many sushi train restaurants, they also had the convenience of an inbuilt table tablet to order our orders from their menu selection, to which we will then be served by a robot serving train. Probably if we were to order the fried selections fresh from the tablet, it would have been nicer - a consideration.

Lastly. We also ordered their sashimi... To which my first concern came back to haunt me. Their sashimi was served nicely on a lifted plate. However, the sashimi came with it's own small paper cup of soy sauce. Hmmm. So now... How will my friend's know if that soy sauce served was halal or non-halal? How can I trust how responsible and considerate you are with your halal certificate, catering to your Muslim customers? Now I question if even your sushis are halal? Do you use any alcohol or wine (mirin), to make your sticky rice/rice balls? What alternatives do you use? I sadly question this restaurants integrity.

To top it off, their salmon sashimi was nice, a solid 7/10. However, their tuna sashimi was horrendous. I often eat tuna sashimi, but theirs was horrid. Was I unlucky? It tasted spoiled and bloody, and had a horrible smell to which all my friends gagged when they smelt it. Was it not aged properly? Or was it not dried properly? Or was it not prepared properly? A disappointment for $9.80... and we ordered 2 :( what a mistake.

Other than that, I don't feel like what I paid ($150+) compared to the questionable...

Decided to try their limited time omakase that we’ve been seeing on social media, which you need to book in advance for.

Would not recommend anyone to try this at all. We booked for 11am, you get the option to choose the flavour of your temaki and nori taco. Let me tell you, our first dish, the sashimi, only came out at 11.40am, after sitting for over 30mins. Mind you, we booked this 1 day ahead and the waiter at the front confirmed we were having the omakase at 11am.

The second dish should have been the chawamushi, which they only started steaming after we FINISHED eating the sashimi. If this is a tactic to make us order more food on top of the omakase by starving your guests, then bravo, you guys are very good at this.

It would have been faster to order stuff from the menu on the spot than prebooking for this omakase. Mind you there were only about 2-3 additional tables when we walked in, not sure what’s the excuse here especially when you have to prebook for the omakase. We only finished our omakase at 12.40pm. The manager (if you all even have one) didn’t even bother to apologise for this appalling service. And the best the front of house staff could offer was to not charge for our drinks which were 2 cups of tea, AFTER WE PAID THE BILL. What is $6 compared to the 40mins we were starved?

Piece of advice, maybe you all are doing too many things (yes you wanna make money and it’s human nature to have greed), you want the to cater to sushi train customers and walking traffic for takeaway sushi, if you want to introduce this omakase course, it might be best to actually have someone in the kitchen that keeps an eye on the timeline of when dishes should be out, I’ve worked in other restaurants and on the docket, the first thing we write is the number of people and the time they sit down so we can keep track of wait times for food and prioritise the orders. Better yet, sometimes we set timers so as soon course 1 is out, we prepare course 2 etc and whatever that can be prepped before the customer is in, is done in the morning.

Not sure if this is just another franchise opened by another person that just doesn’t care about food and just thinks its easy cause you dont need to think much for a franchise, but please know the food scene is competitive, please do better. Your front of house staff works hard but don’t seem to be aware enough to keep track of orders, and your kitchen is full of staff that only care about filling out the damn train to kill their time at work. Your team lacks a leader that actually knows how to lead and teach the team to be aware.

Anyways, we won’t be back here at all, the rice is too think on the temaki, the nori taco flavours do not go well. Sashimi is fine, chawamushi is fine too, creme brulee is alright, but nothing is...

Lacking in price transparency - MASSIVE 10% weekend additional surcharge ‘hidden’. This is on top of 1.6% card surcharge payment.

Food was good, new Japanese fushion sushi. Great addition to new Japanese offerings in Perth.

However wont be back, as we are dissatisfied with the lack of transparency in the price surcharges for weekends, on Sunday - where an additional 10% sneakily added with little (almost non existent notice).

Apparently 1 very little print posted near the till notifying the surcharge (by the time you realise the surcharges, it would have been too late).

While we understand the potential challenges in hospitality industry, potentially double award (salary) for workers on weekends, hey you don’t expect walking into any of the shops within Westfield complex to add 10% on top of the price of their bubble teas, pair of shoes or groceries at Woolies/Coles. Even if they decide to do so, customer should be notified prior to dining in. All of a sudden, the cheapest bowl of plainest udon was not $7.10, it was $7.81 and their salmon taco was not $9, but instead $9.90.

Dined on Sunday 23 June at 2 pm. Long line before and after we dined

Note: no receipt provided unless asked.. how many will never notice this sneaky charges.

Just a little note, according to RBA, business must not charge the card surcharge more than what it cost them.

As a guide, the Reserve Bank of Australia has estimated average costs for different payment types:

Eftpos: less than 0.5% Visa and Mastercard debit: between 0.5% and 1% Visa and Mastercard credit: between 1% and 1.5%.

So, as they charged us today with $1.50 card surcharge for $85.20 meals + $8.52 weekend surcharge = 1.6% excessive card fees - unacceptable.

If calculating $1.50 from prior weekend charge makes it 1.76% card charges....