Banzai Restaurant — Restaurant in Albert-Eden

Found this lively Japanese Sake/tapas place nestled off dominion road.

It has a nice homely feel to it, staff are polite and attentive. The chef and kitchen staff know how to make their menu, which I recommend just trying off their different appetizer items, great to share around.

We absolutely loved their miso soup (some of the best ive had in Auckland yet), hot sake went down well with salt and pepper squid which just melted into your mouth. They also brought out dishes as we ate them so everything was hot and freshly made. The dumplings had a nice light pastry and good filling, also tried the melted salmon nigiri which really did just melt in your mouth.

For dessert we tried the bean paste pancakes and green tea tiramisu. Both were a great way to end the meal. The pancakes came with green tea ice cream that wasn't over the top with green tea flavour and matched well.

All in all my sister and I were very pleased to find this place. This is definitely going to be our go to place for catch ups.

Hats off to you...

No sense of urgency in this place, 3 people working making uber eats meal while the diner waited. If there were busy than understandable but they weren’t. All 3 workers walked around in snail base. The Japanese hospitality was just not there. Dull and plain. I knew something was off when we walked in and saw only 2 people had food on their plate and the rest just sitting there with menu looking like lost diners. We waited a while for them to clear a table so we can sit. There were 4 empty tables with dishes on them. They only came to clear one table for us and left the dishes on the other tables. We waited half an hour and one came to take our order and did not provide water atleast. Pretty sure everyone inside was waiting for a meal they may never arrive but just too polite to leave. Me i wasn’t gonna take that shiz They did not said a word to us. Just a knot to take a seat. We ended up walking out and left for sol sol. I don’t...

Disappointed.

After checking the 4.4 google review, me and my husband have decided to order a selection of appetiser, a ramen and a katzu chicken. The pork in the ramen was chewy, as supposed to be tender. Chicken was dry, although i must say that for $17 there was more panko than meat. Ramen overall was ok.

We also had octopus balls, salt and pepper squid and okonimiyaki.

I have Those dishes often when I eat Japanese. Call them sub standard In this case wouldn’t be enough. They tasted all like very old oil with no other flavour than that, also the consistency

If i had the food at the restaurant I wouldn’t have paid for it.

I believe something must have gone terribly wrong in that kitchen today, because I cannot believe that whit scores so high, we had such a...