Murasaki Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Port Moody

Don't come here if you think about sanitization and food safety. My friend and I came to Murasaki for dinner the other day. She ordered 2 california rolls and I ordered one california roll and one salmon roll.

First of all, the soy sauce bottles are GREASY, when you pick it up you can feel the grime stuck on the bottle. When the rolls did arrive (20 minutes later) the california rolls were badly wrapped. When you would pick it up (especially the end peices) the seaweed would just unwrap and everything fell out. Still tasted good though i'll give you that. Heres where I can't handle this restraunt. My salmon rolls came and when i took the first bite of my roll, I kid you not, the salmon was warm. When i say warm, not like salmon that just came out of an oven. More like, this RAW salmon was sitting near a heater. It was just a moist and warm mess. Raw components hould be taken most seriously as they can harbour the most germs. I'm not sure if they just don't store salmon in a fridge or if my roll just sat near the rice cookers for 20 minutes. Either way, disgusting. I couldnt bear myself to eat it. the second part of our disaster was when my friend asked for extra ginger. We were sat near the back of the restraunt where all the waitresses convined, and the food came out. So when we first asked for more ginger, the lady TOTALLY forgot and never got it for us. Sure no big deal, everybody forgets. We asked her a second time and she apoligozed for forgetting and went to go get it. The entrance to the kitchen was right behind our table, no door or anything. She went staight for the fridge and brought out a tupperware of ginger. Heres were it got gross. After cleaning several tables, running several orders and dealing with the cash registar, she stuck her fingers into the WHOLE tupperware of ginger and fished out a couple peices onto a plastic dish before brining it out to us. May i just remind you she did this right behind us, full view. Not only was our ginger contaminated, the whole tupperware was also. Gross.

California rolls tasted good, presentation and execution could have been better. Overall the food was decent but they really need to pick up the sanitation and food saftey standards. Fraser Health pls come an...

It’s a lovely local place and has customer parking as well.

We went there on a Sunday evening and it was not very crowded. Even though we booked in advance, probably for a Sunday, you won’t need to. They welcomed us with free hot green tea (free refills also provided). For starter, we ordered yakitori and Asahi beer and it came with coleslaw too. Yakitori was fresh and tender and well cooked, with delicious Teriyaki sauce. Coleslaw was also fresh and tasty.

For main, we ordered Katsu-chicken and Japanese chicken curry. Katsu was a big dish that came with green salad, rice and Miso soup and Katsu sauce. It was huge, totally enough for 2. You can get 1 Katsu plus an extra rice bowl (I guess $2) and that’s more than enough for 2. Miso soup was also tasty but not too authentic. We loved it because it was mild and not too sea-like, compared to the original miso soups in Japan. perfect for those like us who don’t like the strong taste of sea in their food.

Curry was mild and OK: vegetables like onions and carrots were much more than the chicken. Compared to authentic ones in Japan, these portions were not at the right balance. Also, it was a bit soupy but the staff were so nice and brought us complimentary edamame.

All in all, I will definitely go there again. The overall feeling was good, I gotta say though, not the most affordable place for Asahi beer ($10 per bottle)

Last but not least. our waitress Jessica (apologies for assuming gender based on looks) was very nice. She explained about the foods we didn’t know and never failed to check on us or bring us things as soon as possible. Good...

while the california roll and udon we ordered was delicious I'm giving it a 1 because the salmon lover and the tonkatsu set was a big disappointment.

The salmon lover was okay to eat, but compared to other smoked salmon rolls I've ate, the flavour was very weak. It was like a fistfight if flavours between the cream cheese and the smoke salmon and jt ended in a draw and felt bland.

For the tonkatsu, I would recommend everyone to steer away from it. The thickness of pork was thinly sliced that it wasn't even to the size of a chopstick thin end. I was tasting only the overcooked breadcrust and no texture of pork. The weirdest thing was the way the tonkatsu was sliced thinly in the long side when it is supposed to be thick and on the short side. The tonkatsu was falling through the holes of the grate that was served on top.

That's not how tonkatsu should be. It should be thick and juicy and soft on the inside with a nice soft crunch on the outside. The saving grace for me was the sauce helped me digest it.

But it's not just the tonkatsu that was bad. The rice was very bad. It was not sticky Japanese rice, it was hard and lukewarm, like they left it in the cooker last night and just opened it up and served it to us.

I can forgive them if it was very busy but we arrived at 11:30 when the store opened and we were the first guests into the restaurant for the day. How could they screw up that bad???

Maybe I'll visit it again but I'll avoid...