Dami Sushi — Restaurant in Nanaimo

In our eternal quest for good sushi in Nanaimo, we were guided to Dami by a colleague of my partner.

It was a very quiet Monday evening, with maybe a third of the tables in use. The decor is great. Very modern with splashes of culture all around.

The menu is huge and made it tough to choose our meal, but after some hemming and hawing we got it down to a good cross section.

Their tuna sashimi was wonderful and easily the best we've had in Nanaimo so far.

Their assorted tempura is a great value, and is pretty average tempura. Not mindblowing, but certainly no slouch. You get green beans, yam, a prawn, some yam, a broccoli floret and pumpkin. The pumpkin is the standout.

Their chicken kaarage is very different from what I've come to expect at sushi places, and was more reminiscent of a chicken nugget, especially coming with honey mustard on the side.

Rolls wise, we ordered the Caterpillar roll, the spicy tuna roll, dynamite roll, salmon roll, yam tempura roll and chicken teriyaki roll.

The Caterpillar roll was the standout, and was very tasty. The rest of the rolls were all fine but nothing stood out. Both the yam and dynamite rolls were very, very crab heavy, which if you like that sort of thing is probably great, but for us who aren't a fan of it, it was a bit of a surprise. For a plain roll, the salmon roll was a decent size with a big piece of fish. The spicy tuna uses sriracha for heat, as you expect. The chicken teriyaki roll was super boring and could use more teriyaki as opposed to a small splash of sauce on the outside.

Sodas are canned pop, so you pay $2 a hit which is one of my pet peeves, but overall it was a good experience and despite the mediocrity of some of the items, Dami has jumped to the top of our list for...

Not a complaint, just my experience.

After seating myself, the younger of the 2 wait staff brought water with not so much as acknowledgement to my thank you or an offer of tea. Besides taking the order and payment, this was the full extent of her service.

Being Lunchtime, I ordered a Sashimi lunch box. It doesn’t say what kind you get on the menu (attached) so I asked for Atlantic. When I went to pay I noticed a charge for an additional $5 for “Atlantic Salmon” so I asked her why since Atlantic everywhere else on the menu is less expensive. She said she didn’t know why, looked on her menu on the wall at the till and pointed to something that said that any substitutions would be an extra $5 charge (also not on the public menu attached). She then asked the other waitress and they both just agreed it’s their policy.

I told her that this is very poor business and I wouldn’t be back because it is actually costing them no extra time while in reality it is saving them in food cost so essentially they are just charging me because they want to.

The two of them gave an apology with no solutions while one of the chefs, who was not busy, stood by completely silent. I wasn’t about to waste anymore time so I figured $.05 on top of the token $5 they already took is way more than ample tip than I would volunteer under this circumstance.

Food was ok, but I just had dental work that morning so it could have been actually better than I could taste. Place is looking a bit tired after unchanged for nearing 15 years but still pleasant enough.

To me, service and business practices makes up the bulk of any dining experience which is why I’ve given Dami a cautionary 1 star and I...

I've been here a few times now. Each time I go I struggle with the food and the treatment of servers.

The last two visits, the food has been questionable. The first visit I bit into a piece of sushi that tasted rancid. I told the manager and he tried to brush it off that it must have been just the one piece. I stopped him and said no, it was bad. I told him that I wanted him to fix things.

Today, my second visit, I had a nice waitress help me. After she took my order, the manager started taking over my service. I stopped him and told him I just needed one server.

Eventually, half an hour before the restaurant was closing my server was gone. I asked him what happened to my server, he told me that she finished her shift. I told him that it was odd. I asked what happens if I want to give her the tip. He explained that I could have tipped her when she was there. I asked him how I would know if she was to finish her shift. He gave no answer.

Also, I complained that one of the sushi with fish was pasty in the texture of peanut butter. He asked me what texture I wanted but didn't provide an answer as to why the fish was like this.

Both visits, I...