Unkaizan Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Kedah

This location showed up in so many review sites with such high rating, but it was such a disappointment. We ordered a grilled ribeye, salmon sashimi, beef saukiyaki, yassai tempura, and a tuna handroll.

Sashimi arrived first, the first thing came to my mind is, the fish is not cold, room temperature or I can say close to luke warm. I'm not sure if this is a problem, but I always have my sashimi cold and I enjoy it like that. Then the temaki came, and first thing we noticed is the rice. They are worse than the cheap Sumo rice you can buy from the market, and its too damp. You can't feel the grain, there is no texture, and no fragrant.

Sukiyaki up next, and without rice. When I asked for white rice, they said the rice needed 15mins to prepare.(The waiter asked whether I wanted rice while taking our order, but I assumed that rice is included and declined the offer, this is probably my mistake.) The sukiyaki tasted nothing but sweetened shoyu, not the true sukiyaki but more like a shoyu nabe.

The grilled beef was then served with the charcoal grills, the condiments accompanied was clearly prepared hours before because the pepper and onions have mo temperature in it. The beef was nicely done (I ordered medium-rare) but the seasoning is a little bit off and un-balance. With this price, I would appreciate a little bit more than salt and pepper?

Finally the tempura is up, with the whole stoke of shimeiji mushroom fried together amd you find uncook-ed batter as you separates them, same to enoki mushroom, the whole chunk of it. Then we found 2 pieces of onions... who uses onion for tempura? At least I've never seen one. And the sauce was bland...

The last thing that came was the rice I waited 15mins, tasted exactly the same like what we had in the temaki.

Conclusion: I gave 1 star for the environment, it wasn't anything japanese but more like nice island vibe of place. Another star for the staff, though he did not ask or offer us any desserts but they did pretty well assisting us. This place is trying to be a fine-dining but they are just far from it. The food is really bad for this price point, you will find some franchise japanese resraurant to have tasted better than them. The only item that brings me joy was the sparkling sake that wasn't cooked by them, sad and irony. I don't really see a reason why I would visit again, although being on an island, it still dont worth the price...

Great service but food tastes mediocre, portion is small & price is way too high for the quality & portion of food.

We had the moriawase umi (5 types of sashimi chosen by chef), cold cha soba, chawanmushi and grilled ika. The price came up to RM $230+.

The cha soba's sauce is very sweet (tasted weird and not the usual type you get in Japanese restaurant where it's more savory) and the sauce is not even cold (the bowl isn't even pre-frozen to keep the noodles cold throughout the short meal), noodles texture was thankfully springy.

The grilled ika's portion was super small & the price was RM $79! The quality was nothing to rave about & the potato on the side tasted better imo I'm sorry 😔

Only saving grace was the moriawase umi (also RM $79) but this was pretty decent (salmon, octopus & unknown white fish with pink edges we're good, hotate was small and flat and average and last but not least, skip the tuna).

The ambience of the shop is nice though, with choices of either sitting on normal table & chair or low table & mat on a raised platform. The service is great too but I won't revisit thanks to the food.

Maybe you can try going there for some sashimi + little sake for an expensive &...

It was still closed when we reached slightly before 6pm. When it was finally opened at 6pm sharp, we went up to enquire for a table for the 5 of us. As we did not have any reservations, we could only be seated outside. There was an option of the typical Japanese style seating on low table (cross legged) or the usual table. As we had an elderly member with us, we opt for the latter. The helpful staff members came to light up a mosquito coil to put underneath our table as well as draw down the blinds as the setting sun was quite glaring/hot for our comfort. One staff member even gave a cushion to my young child to sit on as the chair was too low for her. One of the staffs came to intro us their promotion/fresh sashimi/beef items etc but we didn't order any from there as we don't really take raw food (we had 2 young kids with us) and price seems a bit steep. We ordered a few of the usual menu items for sharing and after a while, the food was served to us. Taste wise all were ok. We didn't have much to complain at all. Our hot tea drinks were refilled at adequate pace. All in, it was a great meal and we would probably come back...