Azuma Sushi Restaurant — Restaurant in George Town

One of my family favorite place for Japanese food. Here’s what we tried :

Saba Shioyaki Set ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The mackerel fish were big, fresh and grilled to perfection with crispy skin in sea salt. My husband always likes to request them to add more salt while grilling it so the meat gets the salt too. Chawanmushi, miso soup and salad is part of their set too.

Ebi Curry Don ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Decently nice, the curry not so fragrant. There’s generous onions in it with few pieces of potato and carrots in the curry. The shrimp were reasonably big.

Nabeyaki Udon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ They were nice enough to separate the ebi fry on another side plate rather than soaking already in the soup like I would had in other place. The dashi were nice, the udon has great chewy texture fully soaked in the dashi. ✨

Tamago Sushi ⭐️⭐️ The egg was nice, the rice is the only let down. Although the sushi rice was well seasoned, it is too mushy already. Despite the rice texture mushy, it is not densely pressed enough, resulting easily break into half as I hold it with my chopsticks.

Tamago Maki ⭐️⭐️ Same issue with above but not easily break down due to the seaweed saved the day.

Hot and Cold Green Tea are refillable.

Overall we would still love to come from time to time. The place looks a bit run down and dirty due to many years...

I normally get cheapskate Japanese from Kings or Mental. Today I walked into Azuma expecting a premium experience. I had mixed results.

Service staff was attentive and this franchise had a good ambience. Our chawanmushi was delayed, I wish the staff would have informed us when our mains arrived. But this is a small issue.

We liked the Sake Shashimi set, salmon was thick and fresh. The salted egg prawns appetizer was crispy and savoury, would go well with beer. Chawanmushi was hot and delicious.

Now, why 3 stars? Couple of problems, the Ikura on my salmon bowl was not fresh. The slices was also thin and lean. I also felt short-changed by the amount of salmon flake I got instead of sashimi (see picture). The Ikura was so bad I had to return it. Unfortunately the kitchen disagree the Ikura was not fresh but accepted the cancellation. I really had my hopes up when I saw the fresh looking Ikura poster on their wall.

The nigiri was not only small, I felt like literally corners were cut (see picture). Not really the premium experience I was hoping for.

Thirdly, the cleaning solution they used to clean neighbouring tables were so strong it affected our ability to taste and smell our food. It intermittently made the place smell like a hospital.

There was some service recovery...

This is a decent Japanese restaurant which is part of the Edo Ichi Group. There's a familiarity in the menu that's distinctly Edo Ichi, but Azuma typically has a kaiten belt section (which unfortunately wasn't running when I was here. The Azuma outlet in Queensbay Mall still operates theirs).

Both the sanma and saba shioyaki were nicely grilled with enough char without burning the fish. I'm particularly fond of sanma shioyaki because of the strong fishy smell and the unique bitterness of the guts when consumed, but this may not be true for everyone (so be warned). The cheese curry Udon was thick, but I wished they had used shredded cheese instead of a slice of processed cheese that still retained its square shape. The Ebi don was decent with just enough sauce on the rice. I also ordered some sushi as a starter; the raw sweet shrimp (amaebi) sushi was sweet as the name implied with a soft texture, the albacore tuna (shiro maguro) was unfortunately a bit too watery to a point I doubt its freshness although the taste and smell was still ok. Luckily, the texture of ika (squid) sushi was still springy.

The service was excellent with very attentive waitresses; my green tea was topped up constantly. Overall, a decent place for Japanese food if you're...