Banzai Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Edmonton

Subpar at best. This used to be a place to come for a well priced, good meal. However, the last few times we've been here the quality of everything has seriously declined.

I came with my wife and we ordered two super bento boxes with a maki "a" box. My wife wanted water and they had a water cooler set up from which one could pour their own. The problem was that the cooler looked as though it hadn't been wiped down in weeks. The water tray was dripping full and the front of the machine was covered with water drip marks that would have taken all but 2 minutes to clean. We then sat down and I tried to get my meal prep in order. I grabbed the teriyaki from the table and the bottle was sticky and caked with dried sauce. I tried to wipe down a bit of it, knowing that the sauce can easily drip and cause this issue, but this had long been dried, not just somewhat sticky. I couldn't clean it well enough so I tried to grab another bottle from a table beside me. This bottle looked clean but as I unscrewed the bottle cap, there was an audible compressed gas sound releasing, as if I'd just cracked a bottle of Coke. There were even bubbles beginning to rise in the bottle. Something like teriyaki sauce shouldn't be pressurized unless something has gone bad.

Besides these cleanliness issues, the food was questionable, as both my wife and I felt as though we were rolling the dice with food poisoning. The miso soup was luke warm and bland. Our sashimi was pale and room temperature. The beef was overcooked and swimming in what seemed like a broth of thick sauce. The teriyaki chicken was ok, but had excess skin that was unappetizing. The tempura was undercooked, doughy and oily.

Overall, our food experience was bordering on inedible. We will definitely not be returning. I will say that the customer service was great, and we do like the rewards program (in fact we used it for the maki "a" box), however, we won't be taking advantage of it anymore since that was...

I've been going to Banzai since it opened. In that time the bowls have gone up more than 2 dollars, which considering economics and inflation is understandable. But what gets me, is that their quality in food keeps going down. The "tempura" is just cheap batter instead of light crunchy authentic Japanese tempura batter, the spring rolls which used to be nice pork ones are now vegetarian filled with cheap bean sprouts (which is one of the worst vegetables for carrying harmful bacteria) but the price stayed the same, and the portion sizes have decreased. Try ordering the Karai or Spicy chicken, you'll see the cook put it in the microwave for you. If you take it to go and you're like me and have several errands to do, you'll need to reheat this for a third time and any healthy and safety officer can tell you that's just not good, especially with chicken. Take a look at the sushi machine against the wall, always covered in rice and dirty...mmmm fresh sushi.

Considering that Edmonton has a huge amount of restaurants per capita and the multitude of Japanese cuisine restaurants, Banzai has really let the ball hit the ground. Since the mother company, Japanese village specializes in tempenyaki, fresh grilled food, its amazing they'd let a sister restaurant be so disappointing.

This is Edmonton, step up your game or Banzai will become a Teriyaki Corner before you...

EWW Have you ever preemptively drank a probiotic prior to a meal... I did and thank god I did! Alright, to their credit, unbeknownst to me, I showed up 5 minutes before close.... for take out. I apologized and would have come back another day, but they encouraged me to order. I did just that. I was expecting to wait around 15+ minutes for the order to be cooked and due to the open kitchen in the back, I thought I'd at least see some.... cooking? Miraculously, the food was packaged up and ready to go in less than 5 minutes. RED FLAG. Honestly, I have no idea where the food even came from! I brought the food home and it was terrible. We threw it out. The veggie tempura was... not good. It looked the exact opposite of fresh and there was a piece I thought was yam/sweet potato, but... do yam's have seeds or holes in the middle of them? I didn't think so, cause it looked like some THING had bored holes into it to live in. The sesame beef rice bowl was very saugey and the beef is something I'd expect in a low tier cat food. Overall, super disappointing. 2 stars only because I showed...