Sushi Ville — Restaurant in Vancouver

Summary for those who don't like rants: three out of four orders had problems. The fourth order never showed. Service was the worst I've had in at least a couple of years and the ingredients used were frankly too old to be served. Gyoza were also filled with spoiled pork.

Rant:

Today was New Year's Day. I understand that they might have been busy and that there may have been problems in the kitchen. That would explain rushed or poor service, delayed seating and food arrival and possibly one or two mistakes in an order. I understand we're all human. That being said:

We arrived and were seated without too much incident, though there were multiple empty tables and it somehow took us almost ten minutes to be seated. This place has really good looking rolls. Super creative and tasty looking. We're excited. In order to get service however, we had to aggressively flag down wait staff (practically getting out of our seats and waving our arms). I ordered pork gyoza and an interesting looking roll. My boyfriend ordered two salmon/avocado rolls. Our friends ordered a roll combo and a seafood salad respectively. We're a little disturbed at the bad service (no tea or place settings have been brought out) but it's New Years so we're cutting them slack, figuring they'll get to it.

Fast forward to the arrival of our food. My food and one of our friends' food arrives well enough. My boyfriend is given one roll and not the other, but we figured it would come out with our last friends' seafood salad so we dig in. -Friend number one's food: two of the rolls in his combo were correct. The third was not. The ingredients looked old from across the table and he said the rice tasted stale. -boyfriend: guess what? His second roll never came. -Friend number two: guess what? His food also never came. -Me: my gyoza came out completely cold. It's filling, while pleasant tasting, was only lukewarm. Rather than serving it with gyoza's usual dipping sauce, mine came in a complementary puddle of grease. I worked my way through them because I was hungry and once the food came out, the servers all vanished as if they knew they'd brought us crap. The last one however, I bit into and discovered that not only was it undercooked (dangerous for pork) but it was also starting to spoil. This is also SUPER DANGEROUS. I couldn't even believe it but since there was no serving staff until it was time to pay, it was a little hard to complain. The filling had that sour taste and smell that you get when ground pork it about two or three days past its prime. Charming. My roll was topped with spicy tuna, which was a bit of a strange ruddy brown, limpid mush as opposed to every other spicy tuna I've ever had. It had an unpleasant texture and tasted old, like it had been made a couple of days ago.

To add insult to injury, we had to actively flag down staff to get chopsticks delivered to our table and only after we finished eating, we finally got tea. I use the term "tea" loosely here. This was not tea. This was warm (not hot) water with a slight greenish colour.

Needless to say, none of us tipped and we will not be back. I highly caution against eating at a restaurant willing to serve...

Let's first say the good things: the staff is courteous, prompt, and tries hard.

However, there is a major problem when a sushi restaurant can't get the sushi rice right, and unfortunately that is the case here. Underseasoned (no vinegar?) and undercooked rice makes for very underwhelming sushi. There are also issues with serving sizes, seasoning, and overall quality of the ingredients. Although the prices are OK for sushi, in a competitive environment like Vancouver's this restaurant's offering is just not appealing.

We ordered miso soup, spicy agedashi tofu, grilled squid, salmon, saba, and toro nigiri, as well as salmon and saba oshi sushi.

The miso soup was about half the size of what you get at other restaurants. The agedashi tofu was not served in its usual sauce, and it was smothered in store-bought spicy sauce. This turned out to be a constant; sauces were abused, possibly to hide the fact that the other ingredients didn't cut it. The ika was served cold, chewy, and smothered in barbecue sauce. The nigiri pieces were the most underwhelming part of the meal. Razor-thin, almost transparent pieces of fish, served on top of lumpy (but not sticky) rice without flavour. The saba had clearly been cut from a piece that was still frozen, as it was ice-cold and stiff. The oshi pieces were all-in-all the most passable part of the meal, but still off. The salmon oshi was too spicy because of a combination of too much sauce and too much jalapeño (it was well presented with an attractive gimmick involving dry ice though). The saba oshi was the only dish in which the flavours were well balanced, and the amount of fish close to what one would expect; however, because there was no getting around the fact that the rice was plain bad, the textures did not blend as well as the flavour.

Overall, this was a solid miss. All of the above cost $99 + tip. Not expensive for the amount of food, but you can get substantially better quality...

I went here during the afternoon when it was quite quiet and very much enjoyed the experience. Fairly good food, excellent prices, was served quickly.

Came here when it was busy and it was a totally different story. It took forever to get a waitress to serve us, when she did she hardly understood what we were ordering. We ordered some cocktails and she didn't know what they were. She came back five minutes later and told us they couldn't make margaritas today. I tried to order a Cosmo instead and she just flat out said they wouldn't make cocktails at all because it was too busy.

I ordered a combo and my four friends ordered various other things. The bento box came out quickly, and then some other bits and pieces. After my friends were basically done the waitress comes over to clarify what my order is. They hadn't even started making it yet and my friends meals had already arrived. It was about twenty minutes between when the first meal arrived at our table and when the two of us yet to receive our meal finally gave up and told them not to bother.

We had somewhere to be at 7 (we arrived at 6) and simply could not wait any longer. Rather than being apologetic, the staff seemed angry at us for leaving! They claimed one of the meals that never arrived was now completed, and attempted to charge us for it even though we had not eaten it and were not taking it!

I would have expected to have my drink comped for the terrible service but they did not even do this. I've never been to a restaurant before where I've left no tip, but this one required that. I wish there were a way to leave a negative tip. The restaurant was busy, but they had three servers for about ten to twelve tables, so there was no excuse.

I have never had worse service in my life, I would advise anyone even thinking of going here to avoid it like the plague. The most disappointing restaurant I've ever had the displeasure...