Basara Sushi Restaurant — Restaurant in Venice

Adding this in 2024, but the review for some reason looked like it was removed, when original posting was 2018. The owner looks like they since wrote back and said they no longer have those items, so I cannot confirm if the menu and management has changed, but I can confirm my original posting was 2018 below

This place is tremendously awful. At least read my summary if you don't read my full write-up.

It's been over a month. I've given myself a month to cool down, and I still want to give this place 0 stars. I urge you to save your money, time, and hunger, and go elsewhere.

Yes, I should have known that Japanese should not have been a cuisine of choice in Venice, but I just wanted something simple, like a katsu-don.

Well, that's not what you'll get here. Upon walking up to the restaurant, very quickly I sized up it was a fusion Japanese restaurant. But OK, my patient mother convinced me to just look at the menu. I did, and you know what? It looked good! It had uni, it had ankimo (monkfish liver, if that's your thing!) - this place could be legit.

So we sat down. Made our decisions pretty quickly. Now this is where it starts to go down....and downhill some more.

I'd like to order the ankimo, please. "I'm sorry, we ran out." Ok, we can order another appetizer. Let me order the other stuff. Can we have one udon, please? "Sorry, we ran out." A Japanese restaurant out of udon? The next noodle up (some sesame noodle, I recall) I asked for one. "We ran out." At that moment, honestly, the first 3 things ordered they "ran out". I should have walked out. But instead, I ordered uni, some other stuff, and a rainbow roll.

Out came the uni. Both Mom and I were excited! We haven't had our asian fix for a while but we both looked at eachother, our brows furrowed..."Uni doesn't taste like this." I asked for the waitress to come and told her it's not fresh. She said it should be fresh and asked if I wanted her to take it away. I was really pissed by this time. So I asked to speak to the chef - any proud Japanese chef CANNOT think it's ok to serve BAD SEAFOOD. Not surprisingly, no chef came to my table. After making firm remarks, she took away the bad seafood but still charged me for the crap we ate. I'll save the rest of the story because the thought of this cannot be good for my mental health!

SUMMARY:

Don't order fresh seafood - if it's warm, it's not fresh Don't let them sell you on fresh wasabi - it was some strange looking salsa verde...NOT wasabi Dead giveaway - no sushi bar, not an authentic Japanese restaurant. There's a 3 euro table charge per person You're paying what you would pay for a good restaurant in NYC....but POOR service and crap food

I don't care that your chef isn't Japanese (I saw your chef coming out of the bathroom), but serving sashimi / raw seafood requires skill and at the least, proper food handling requirements (it shouldn't be room temperature). DON'T COME HERE UNLESS YOU WANT TO POTENTIALLY GET SICK...

Let me just start with a little background.

My wife and I have been to Japan and have been to 3 and 2 Michelin starred restaurants. As a local Californian, we’ve tried the most famed (from local Japanese-American citizens) restaurants as well. We have acquired a great taste of high quality sushi.

Reading some of the older reviews have some ridiculous comments, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Some comments do not make sense when complaining of the size of the rolls or lack of children’s menu, or not understanding Japanese/English. Sushi rolls are not meant to be big. Big rolls doesn’t mean better sushi... I can go on but let’s get to our experience.

We arrived around 1900hours, not too busy. We were greeted by Mauro(not sure if that’s the right spelling) and he was very polite and welcoming. We sat right next to the window on the first floor. We ordered the historic Seared Salmon with truffles, toro, and unagi. All the dishes were amazing and brought flashbacks to Japan. The Seared Salmon was great and the truffles added an Italian twist. The toro and unagi tasted as if we were in Japan. The fish was fresh and most importantly the rice was perfect! It’s the rice that will separate regular sushi places to high quality sushi restaurants. Trust me...the quality of ingredients was perfecto!

We were so satisfied we came back the next day. This time we made reservations. (Make reservations, Basara can get busy especially during the weekend)

Our second time we had the miso black cod, seared tuna with truffle, unagi with foie gras, and a lobster nigiri. All of these dishes just melted in our mouth and we’re amazed! A special shoutout to the chefs behind the counter. Christian and Steve looked busy but were able to prepare all these dishes to perfection. Each dish was carefully crafted and they presented them in a beautiful way The wait staff did her best in understanding our English and she was attentive and very polite.

My wife will always remember our experience. Both the staff and food was amazing! Also, the decor a design of the bathroom was cool!

Not only does Venice have the beautiful historic churches, places, people, gondolas, scenic views, etc... it has one of the best sushi...

Probably the best sushi in Venice, at least quality wise, the service is not up to food quality nor how the restaurant present it self.

The young waiter that served us did not understand English well, while the head waiter spoke and understood well. Probably if it was only the head weather the service would be slow (slower since it’s pretty slow already) but I think it would improve quality wise.

Maybe I’m wrong but I think that at least 50% of customer will be English speaking, so fluent waiters should be a must.

But it’s not just about languages, we witnessed at least 3 dished going back because of mistakes in taking the orders, we saw customers trying and trying to call the waiters or get their attention, and icing on the cake we were presented the wrong bill. Maybe takeaway is the best option, but the restaurant handling both in place dining and takeaway is already affecting the service speed.

With dissed costing up to 32€ the service should be much much much much of higher quality.

I do hope that this restaurant will stay around and that the service improves. The fuse time I was here there was a waitress which seemed good, but didn’t see her the next visits to...