Sushi 99 — Restaurant in Waterloo

I recently revisited Sushi 99 after several years of avoidance, due to a previous negative experience. We wanted to give them another try and we were excited to see how they may have improved their services.

Well, let's say we shouldn't have come back! We were greeted by a young man who was very cold in his tone and no emphasis on customer service.

We started to order and when the food came to our table it felt like it was thrown on the table like we were dogs. Even at one point the server even spilt sauce on my table and chair after "serving" my food.

I would say thank you each and every time our food came around, but out of the 4 people who came to give us our food only one would reply to me and say you're welcome or some positive response or even acknowledge I was there.

After discussing with my wife how poor the service was we decided to just order icecream for our kids and leave!

Well 20 minutes later with nobody else left in the restaurant, someone came to clean the tables beside us several times, ignoring us everytime! We had enough of waiting and decided to pay and leave.

Once we got up to pay, we told them we had been waiting for 20 minutes for our last order. Without even apologizing we were asked, "do you still want the icecream" I thought he was joking at first but we just refused. We did not want to be there any longer!

Once we paid and left and looked back briefly, we even seen the two men laughing and talking amongst themselves.

Your customer service is so poor and it always has been. I would like to think that you take this experience seriously and look to improve but I don't think you care about the customer experience too much.

If I could give you a negative star...

I used to go to Sushi 99 once a week, every week pre-Covid. I continued to order takeout throughout lockdowns, but the quality and care has been declining for a while now.

The sushi rice is often over-seasoned, to the point the point where it tastes very vinegary. The rice is always hot too, which is unpleasant.

The salmon sashimi lately has been very hit or miss. Some days it’s great, while others it has a very fishy taste (which fresh salmon shouldn’t have), and is badly cleaned (bones and scales in the sashimi pieces).

The staff rarely clear empty plates causing a mountain of dishes at the end of our table, and despite asking for more water we waited 10 minutes in an empty dining room before we needed to ask again in order to get a room temperature refill.

The overall atmosphere leaves a lot to be desired. The lights are dim, the benches have torn and tattered seats, the entire side of the restaurant is treated as storage with fridges and supplies stacked everywhere and the lobby is used to store broken Christmas decorations.

While the price point was always reasonable, I was surprised to see a price increase given the deep decline in experience. Given the price now, it makes more sense to go elsewhere, where the quality is consistently top-notch.

Overall, I am really disappointed to see the drastic decline in quality and care at Sushi 99. I’m hoping they can correct this and return to their...

Brutal, save yourself the time, money and disappointment and just avoid this place. My Mother-in-Law called ahead to make reservations for a birthday dinner for my sister. It took quite a bit to organize everyone and she wanted to plan out a really special family dinner. The whole dinner was a train wreck. First off - they didn't properly reserve the tables so we had to improvise and ended up mashing some tables together with a booth so we could all sit together. However, the people in the booth were actually trapped in. Second, the food is pretty bad. The fish they served us was nowhere close to fresh, some of us felt sick after dinner. The other cooked dishes were cold by the time they brought them to the table. Nobody likes cold & soggy tempura. Third, they didn't clear the little dishes that the food comes on so they kept piling up, pretty gross. And the straw that broke the camel's back - they wanted to see my sister's driver's license/birth certificate as proof that it was her birthday. My Mother-in-Law reserved and paid ahead for cake, which they did not even serve us. Did they think we were lying? Were the birthday cards and gifts everyone brought not proof enough? My Mother-in-Law was crushed. The birthday memory from Sushi 99 we were left with? Disappointment, insult, and some upset stomachs. ...