Kawawa Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Burnaby

Our only reason to eat ramen is for the rich and creamy pork bone marrow broth. Kawawa doesn't have many pork bone broth ramens to choose from. Most are vegan and miso broth based. We chose Tomato Beef Ramen and Cow Tongue Ramen. Both are $15.95 each. Both rich and creamy and ridiculously delicious. Not too salty. Just right. We drank all of the broth. Yum!

However, both ramens, the meat lack meat flavor. They must have excessively tenderized the meat with baking soda that they lost all its original meat flavor. Bummer. In case you don't know, cow tongue in Japan is considered a rare delicacy, therefore, very expensive. To ruin it like this is a big "DA ME ダメ!!"

[Update: August 22, 2023] Last time we tried their ramen side of the restaurant, this time we tried their "All Day Mix & Match Items". Wife and I loved it. We find the $22.95 a bargain but not the $36.95 Premium as the only difference is the addition of Sashimis. Big eaters would want all-you-can-eat. Small eaters like us don't go to buffets because we can never get our money's worth, not even close. That's why this 30-item method is more suitable for us because WE CAN DOGGIE BAG THE REMAINING ITEMS!! We ordered two $22.95 ($10 minimum per customer) and are entitled to 60 items. We filled our stomachs at the 32 items mark, so we doggie bagged the remaining 28 items instead. Let's see you do that in an all-you-can-eat buffet. 😝😝😝 No restaurant is stupid enough to allow doggie bagging from an all-you-can-eat buffet 🤣

Anyway, my version of MUST EAT and MUST SKIP:

MUST EAT: Miso Soup and Gomae Salad - Miso soup is tasty. Gomae Salad has too much sauce but still good Salmon fish heads - delicious but very greasy. Salmon heads are expensive at supermarkets Temaki or cones - twice the size of Nigiri sushi but still count as 1 item Salmon and Tei Nigiri Sushis - Only if you had enough of Temaki ☺️ Chicken and Beef Terayaki - sauce too sweet but delicious Maki Sushis - Two Maki Sushis count as 1 item Yam Tempura - Wife loves that Udon - pretty tasty, although you can not doggie bag it unless you bring your own container.

MUST SKIP: Oyster and Scallop Motoyaki - ROFL! Tiny oysters. Tiny bay scallops. You will LOL when you see it! Deep Fried - they are all very greasy. Fried tofu is not bad, but that tiny cube counted as 1 item. Not worth it! Ebi, Tamago, and Inari Sushis - Tiny cooked shrimp, egg, and sweet tofu you can live without Fresh Fruit and Edamame - LOL. Seriously!?!

Remember to bring your own containers as it cost $1 each here!

[Update: Oct 29, 2023]

We've tried Mix & Match a few more times since. This time, however, for the first time, we ordered the Premium Mix & Match. It was on a Saturday, therefore, the cost was a buck more than weekdays, at $37.95 per person.

We've tried the Premium exclusive items:

310 to 312 Sashimis They were surprisingly good and a great bargain in comparison to genuine sushi restaurants. Considering we paid $22 for 7 pieces of minutely bigger tuna sashimis at genuine sushi restaurants, Kawawa's $1.27 per item ($37.95 ÷ 30 items) or $1.27 per sashimi piece was a great deal. The only problem is that you are limited to 5 pieces per person. 😮‍💨

722 Salmon Teriyaki Meh. Nothing good to say. You can do without.

781 Grill Beef Short Ribs Small but absolutely delicious and a little too sweet for our taste. Also, most pieces came with a chunk of fat that we had to remove for our health's sake. In the end, there is not much edible meat available to eat.

Overall, we still think the regular $22.95 Mix & Match is a better deal. We would have recommended the $36.95 Premium Mix & Match if only there is no limit to ordering Sashimis. Still, considering how much we doggie bagged (see picture), $37.95 was still worth it 🤤🤭🤤🤭

PS. Try not to come during peak hours and on weekends. The food were mostly luke warm to cold. Everything appeared to have been pre-cooked, thus leaving the food cold. Once the crowd left, everything were...

AVOID AT ALL COST!! THEY BETTER CLOSE THIS RESTAURANT.

I’ve been here 3 times but never satisfied and after today I promise to myself I will never come back.

HORRIBLE FOOD

For the first 2 times I came before Covid. The service was ok, but the food was horrible. I got a COLD prawn tempura more than $11. Extremely high price. The beef hotpot is terrible, not tasteful at all.

ONE HOUR WAITING FOR FOOD = UNACCEPTABLE I still came back for the third time today because I was shopping close by so decided to try again because I didnt want to walk far. However, it took them 15 minutes to serve me a cup of tea and almost 1 hour to give me one sushi roll. I ordered a hotpot and beef sashimi as well but even waiting for an hour and they have not been served yet. Extremely disappoint. I dont understand why because the restaurant was not fulled, only 5-6 tables have customers and my food (sushi roll, hotpot) should not take that long to make (im not asking for luxurious or any deep fried food etc, why did it take that long to serve meee?) I saw only 2 servers but if they were understaff, they should not accept customer coming in and let them sit and wait for 1 hour. They better tell me ahead of time because I had to spend one hour for doing nothing. If you dont have enough staff, let the customers wait outside so they know and can go somewhere rather than taking them in, sit on the table and wait for AN HOUR FOR FOOD. This is unacceptable service and they better close this restaurant.

RUDE SERVICE The service never smile, never say thank you or say hi to me. Only put a cup of tea on the table and go. Even though they were understaff and busy, a lot of customers waiting for food, they still taking lunch break for long time. Only speaking CHINESE and never say a thank you word to customer.

I can understand that they are understaff after covid but they need to respect customer time and tell them ahead before letting them in. We coming here to spend money for food, not asking for free food. There is no way that I will wait an hour for my “so so” food. I am pretty easy going and rarely review any places but I had to write a review today. They wasted 45 minutes of my life so im willing to spend extra 15 minutes to write this to warn other customers.

90% of customers came here was not happy but you wondering why they are still open? Probably opening just for money laundering.

REALLY...

This place is honestly a scam don’t come here for the “all day mix and match”.

It’s the most ridiculous model I’ve ever seen from an establishment that used to do AYCE. Last time I came here, it was AYCE and while the food wasn’t great, it was a good time and we enjoyed the experience as there really aren’t many AYCE Japanese spots in Burnaby. However, now all of that has changed.

Today, the restaurant offers what they call “all day mix and match”, which gives each diner a maximum of 30 items to order. You might think “ok, 30 items that’s not bad” but then you see the menu and realize that each single piece of calamari is 1 order, each single gyoza is 1 order, each single piece of tofu is 1 order, each single tempura is 1 order, each single piece of teriyaki meat or chicken wing is 1 order, each nigiri is 1 order, etc. But hey, for 1 order of fresh fruit you get 2 orange slices and same for all the maki so I guess that’s something?

You get to 30 items very quickly, and for a premium price of 36.95 per adult, I find that this is quite ridiculous. They do offer a lower menu price of around $22, but this menu lacks sashimi/grilled beef and a few other things which we wanted to eat. But for sashimi, you get a max of 5 pieces, and, you guessed it, each slice of sashimi counts as 1 order.

On top of this ridiculous pricing model, the food quality itself is extremely subpar. Tempura came out soggy and had no crisp at all. Teriyaki chicken came out lukewarm and didn’t even seem like it had any grilling done to it - just boiled chicken coated in a lackluster sauce. All fish quality was also extremely low, tuna nigiri looked and tasted incredibly sad. Barely any pieces of scallop just soaking and sitting in an egregious amount of mayo/oil in the scallop motoyaki. I could say much more but any reader can get a pretty good sense of what they’re walking into with regards to food quality just from scrolling down through some of the other reviews as well.

In conclusion, steer clear and far and turn the other way - you may get baited in by the alluring location and decorative appeal of a Japanese restaurant and think about giving it a try, but unless you are truly desperate and/or have never had sushi before, or you just have some money to blow, there’s a McDonalds just downstairs, a cheesesteak spot directly across, and movie theatre popcorn that'll probably be a...