Nikaido 二階堂 Japanese Yakiniku BBQ Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

We dined at Nikaido and chose the premium buffet. At $69 per person this was a massive let down.

First impressions

From the front door you can see into the kitchen where there is a guy just grabbing frozen beef out of plastic bags and chucking it onto the plate, that was the first "oh no".

We had called ahead of time and made a booking, we were told that its not going to be busy but when we showed up the place was absolutely packed, the manager had told us he won't be long but we were left at the front door for 5 to 10 minutes, at this point I am still understanding as they looked very busy.

The Service

After we were seated we were given an ipad to ordet on, and were shown the rules on the ipad, however the ipad was not responsive but that was sorted quickly so the service wasn't the worst thing about the night.

We put though the order for the meats and sides on the ipad, and after a bit of waiting the meats started coming to the table, the waiters were visibly under lot of stress as they put the food down and quickly left, however in the rushness they had forgotten to take the order slip out of the plate, so all our plates had a paper slip in it.

Through out the night the service got better as people started clearing out.

The Vibe *

I have been here before when it was less busy and it was actually very nice, however this time the place was packed and there were a few tables who had brought along their babies. Needless to say there was a lot of loud crying through out the night until the babies have left.

The food * Oh boy, where do I even begin. For a premium buffet the meat is quite below average, the meat was brought to us on a plate and it looks rushed and the presentation gets a 0/10. The meat were all different sizes and thickness, it looked like we were served a plate of off cuts.

Once we got cooking all the meat tasted the same, lacking in both the taste and texture, bringing shame to the wagyu name. (I have eaten here before but on the a la carte menu, the food is literally hundred times better in quality and taste).

The scallops that were served to us was... Almost non existing, I have never seen such small scallops and sliced so thin. It also came in a drizzle of soy sauce which added some flavour I guess.

Oh yeah, the butter cube they put in these dishes are tiny, cmon guys it's butter, how can you cheap out on butter when the dish is butter and corn or butter and garlic??

The sides were good but they are very filling. Not much to say about the flavour as it tasted pretty good, but on certain dishes the serving is abysmally small.

TL;DR *

The buffet is an absolute waste of money, we paid $70 per person and all got mad stomach aches which wasn't fun.

Most customers come for the buffet, please pull it together and stop treating your customers like fools.

I won't be coming back here as this has been the biggest let down.

If you're going to eat here just order from the a la carte menu and avoid this place completely if...

We are normally frequent customers of Nikaido, and we have always been quite impressed with their quality and value.

However, when we recently took our friends from overseas to dine at Nikaido Neutral Bay, we were very disappointed. We got the Premium buffet.

Two main issues

1. Meat. The meat looked like it had been thrown onto the plate, rather than neatly arranged. A minimum standard of presentation is expected when we pay a premium price. The main problem was because the meat was still heavily frozen, which precluded a neat arrangement of the meat. Therefore, this was a problem of the meat not being sufficiently defrosted prior to being presented to guests. As a buffet experience, I would have expected that the restaurant adequately prepares meat beforehand for all guests; we weren't even the later sitting. Some of the meat was icy, diluting the overall flavour.

What was worse was that many of the tendinous portions of meat appeared at the bottom of the plate, hidden from view. Not sure if this was intention. However, again, as a premium experience, the expectation is no or minimal tendon in wagyu which is supposed to be textural. If I wanted tendinous meat, I'd go to a pub. This was inedible and we voiced our concerns to the staff.

2. Sushi and sashimi. Again, the presentation was awful. The "sashimi" barely qualified as sashimi as presented on the night. The cuts were so irregular and small that they might as well have been offcuts. The size was just sad: less than the size of a child's finger. Definitely not a premium experience.

Another issue with the sushi was the aburi. Aburi should have a nice and even torch to it, making it suitable for people who don't want to eat purely raw sashimi. However, the torch was inadequate and so barebones that it didn't even qualify as aburi. This is not just an issue with presentation, but rather a misleading reference to the ordered dish. Additionally, the mayonnaise topping was sloppy and represented a lacklustre attention to detail and care.

When we approached the manager about our concerns, it didn't seem like he took our concerns seriously. This is unfortunate because we normally highly recommend this restaurant, but this experience was very poor.

The restaurant advertises a premium experience for its buffet. However, our visit this time was definitely not premium in terms of food quality and...

Cannot recommend this place. The food quality was of medium to high standard with every dish tasting good, but for the advertised premium wagyu quality the presentation was lacking. The meat was cut unevenly such that timed cooking was near impossible. On top of this, the worst part was that we got rushed off our table due to the eating time limit. We were initially promised 100 minutes of eating time of which we effectvely were only able to use 60 minutes and then the order was abruply cut off by the management. All of this was only half as bad as it sounds, but what really upset me was when the waitress told us that the next guests had arrived and needed our table, while they had only finished serving us with food 5 minutes earlier, and our table was literally stacked with unfinished and uncooked food. I had to tell her that I was not going to pay unless we got to finish our dishes. Our stomachs were in pain all evening due to the rush at the end. Not very impressed at all. DO NOT COME HERE ON BUSY EVENINGS! It only exacerbates the problem. It is clear that this business is designed as a money making machine, not a comfortable restaurant to have a relaxing time with friends...