Sushi Zanmai Imago Shopping Mall — Restaurant in Borneo

This is a chain sushi restaurant that opened up at the Imago mall. As a rule, if you want good sushi in KK, you avoid the sushi restaurants in malls. This restaurant unfortunately meets the same standard. We came for lunch and the place was half full at the time.

Decor - Since it's a newer restaurant, nothing looks worn. There's lots of seats to accommodate patrons. You can sit at a number of booths or sit around the conveyor belt sushi area, where the price of the sushi is dictated by the color of the plate.

Food - We ordered the following: Fuji - Basically a sashimi belly sampler. It came much later than everything else, like 1 hr later. It's almost RM80.00 and the menu says it serves 3-4 people. We should have realized that the picture showing it is waaaay zoomed in so it looks much bigger than the actual size. What we got was a shell plate a little larger than my hand, with about 15ish pieces of sashimi. You barely can feed 2 people let alone the suggested size of 3 to 4. If the waiter mentioned this we would have ordered something else. Some tasted ok, but some were hard and frozen, especially the toro. See service section on how the manager reacted.

Okonomiyaki - great! in fact, the best dish we ordered. Benito flakes were the smaller kind instead of the bigger ones but the taste is what is expected.

Edamame - The waiter asked if you wanted it fresh or not. I think he meant frozen. We got the fresh version and it was good. The pods were in groups of 3 or 4, which is different from what you get in other restaurants or in the freezer section of your grocery store. Lightly salted, this is a hard dish to mess up and everyone didn't mind it. 2 noodle soup dishes (forgot the name) - This was ordered by 2 of people in the group. They didn't say much about it, so I assume they were at ok with it.

Service - Boy did they drop the ball on this one. I mentioned the sashimi issue to the waiter, and he summoned another waiter. I told him the issue. He then then summoned another waiter,and when I mentioned this to the second waiter, he went to get what looked to be the manger. He was wearing white. When I mentioned to him the frozen sashimi, he said that that's how it is served. We agreed that sashimi shouldn't be served warm but cmon, would someone think it is ok if you can pick pieces of ice off of sashimi if your chopsticks? He said he was not willing to remake it because the kitchen is busy, and suggested that we wait for the fish to thaw before eating. What. The Heck. Rather than to make more of a fuss because they were not budging, we ate whatever wasn't fully frozen. About 15 minutes later, the manger come back and saw the still frozen sashimi not being eaten. He told us he can help defrost it or go make it again. We declined as we weren't going to wait another 45 minutes.

Final check came out to about 150.00RM. While the appetizers were good, the fish and manager's reaction was a miss. The cooked foods are fine, but sushi lovers should find somewhere else to go lest they want to come out half full and unsatisfied. The final rating is 2.5 stars, but since I can't give half stars, the end review is 2 stars since the manager's response was...

We had the worst dining experience at this restaurant. In fact we didnt even get the chance to dine. Our family of 8 went in to the restaurant and was seated for 15 mins just waving hands trying to get attention from any of the waitress for the menu. FOR THE MENU! WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HAND OUT TO US WITHOUT ASKING. (in the meantime we had pressed the service button for more than 3 times and was ignored.) there were 2 girls by the cashier talking n laughing for the whole time we were trying to get them(mind you. Its not the peak hour). When they finally decide to come to our table, THIS WOMAN WAS RUDE BEYOND WORDS. (i guess she was having her period and decided to pick on us.) one of the staff seated us at back to back table as she sad we are a family. When the rude woman came by, she was telling that we are not supposed to seat back to back even if we are a family. FINE! I understand the current sop. (shouldnt all staff know the same seating rule? Why were we being told differently.) THE RUDE WOMAN then proceed to blame us for being ignorant with the system lah, for breaking the rules la. I'm like, how are we supposed to knw how do ur restaurant arrange your seat. Every restaurant has their own??? This women continued with her blaming and black face towards us even we explained nicely that we were seated by the other staff. We can move. But since this egoistic woman is feeling like a king and critizizing us nonstop, we lost all appetite and decided to leave instead of having a heated argument. I really feel management should look into ur staff's training and their attitude towards customer. Its unbelievably below the gut. Its not right to treat your customer like that esp when it's not their fault!! PLEASE TRAIN...

Went to eat around 7pm during Ramadhan. Restaurant was clearly understaffed as nobody was at the door to serve us. We were then ushered to our seats and my first impression was the floor feels dirtier than other sushi zanmai outlets i have ever been to. Thats ok, here comes the food. Soft shell crab sushi tastes bad, crab not crunchy, rice too sticky and overall just a mushy and cheap taste. Again clearly the kitchen was rushing out orders and could not maintain quality due to insufficient staffs, i blame the management. My cha soba arrived (sadly no photo) and looked like it was made in a hurry, the arrangement of the noodles wasn’t appealing at all. Lastly, table beside were two foreigners from korea, i saw them ask for tissue from the staff thats tasked with cleaning and tidying up the tables. However i was not even sure if they were acknowledged, the look on their faces were in disbelief just smiling and shaking their heads. Meanwhile the staff just continued to arrange the chairs, clean the tables, etc. i may be busybody in this case but this affects the impression of Sabah and Malaysia to the eyes of foreign tourists on our restaurant services, and so I called out to the staff and reminded him that the two foreigners called for him. He didnt even acknowledge what I said, but after a while he got them their tissues.

Again i dont blame him but i think the management should have prepared more staffs during peak hour ramadhan, seems like they...