Sakebar Nippon Takapuna — Restaurant in Devonport-Takapuna

I’d always been told if you write an angry email- save it and let it sink in overnight - so if you’re reading this assume it did.

I’d previously been a fan of this place patronising it from the beginning and had always been impressed by the genuine atmosphere, the food quality and the attentiveness of the staff. I love that the food you ordered rolls out gradually with the first of the dishes usually hitting the table in around 15 minutes in.

Well…. Not tonight. This rating (3), takes into account all the great meals we’ve had there so draw your own conclusion as what the actual individual rating of tonight’s overall experience was.

We sat down at a reasonable time for prompt service after booking online and as regular patrons had placed our order within five minutes. I know we had ordered our meals before a table opposite, and one down as the staff return to attach the printed order to your table.

Twenty minutes in and our neighbours are starting to enjoy the food that has arrived, and continued to arrive for the next fifteen minutes. Awesome - they were happy.

I watched as others were served, and would normally have been one of those pushy customers who want to know the ETA of their food, however as this was our anniversary I opted to not be my usual self. I remained restrained.

My wife ended up asking for a glass of water and gave the waitress a gentle reminder about the food.

At forty minutes I would normally have left - especially on a Wednesday. Just making the point here - that this is not one of the busier nights.

Forty five minutes in and our food arrived. I’m actually not going to go into the food in-depth, except to say that we’re done. Bar one dish, I’d have been happier with 6 combo deluxe burgers from any of the chains.

The service was - non existent, although polite when you could actually get their attention.

To finish this, let me quote the waitress - ‘we’re busy - not enough staff’. I assume the job of the restaurant manager is to keep the restaurant under ‘critical’ capacity - apparently not here.

I...

Overall great food and fun atmosphere. Unfortunately a couple of factors left a bit of a sour taste in our experience this time around. We were seated in a table in the front window which on a sunny day becomes unbearably hot with the sun shining low and into everyone’s eyes. Ten minutes before we left they finally went out and put up an umbrella to block the sun - might be worth doing this as a matter of course.

We dined early and were aware they needed our table back within an hour so we made sure to order and eat quickly. We then were left waiting 25 minutes for our final dish. After following up twice it finally arrived but our young kids were totally over it by then. It was also well over the time that the supposed other booking had been due to arrive so felt annoyed that we’d rushed through the first part of our meal when we clearly hadn’t needed to. Neither of these two things were major but it was disappointing that when I mentioned both as we left that we didn’t get any kind of apology. The wait person said an apathetic ‘oh ok’ when told about the unpleasant heat, and I got an excuse about the kitchen being busy when I mentioned the delay to one of our dishes. For the first part of our meal the kitchen wasn’t busy at all, it was clear to us the meal had been forgotten. It just would have been nice to have had a ‘sorry’ to either of these things instead of the disinterested and arrogant tone...

Tried visiting here just last Sunday, arrived about 4-4.5hrs, before it was supposed to close . We arrived, then parked & walked 5mins to the restaurant. To our utter disappointment, it was not only closed, but was completely shut down, with all tables and chairs etc stacked up inside with absolutely no lights on. Sure, a thunderstorm was coming in, BUT due in about 10-14 HOURS 🙄🤷‍♀️ 😒☔ NOT particularly bad in that area, and NOT the flooding expected as in other parts of Auckland and the North Island, which was due OVERNIGHT, as in AFTER the restaurant would have been closed for Hours. . ALOT of other bars, restaurants, takeaway places were open around Nippon so really unsure as to why they were closed up! If they were closed as they'd decided they'd rather send staff home, much earlier than before the storm was due to start, then fine, that's a fantastic employer award for them, however, at the very least they could've put a notice/sign up on the front door,

So what was very disappointing was NO warning or explanation, as to it being closed, on either the Google Info page (which is a simple update that takes a couple of clicks!!) or their actual website having a notice on it, which I Checked before we planned our night around dinner here.. not even a note on the door??! It was good for our LOCAL pub/restaurant up the rd, Mayfield, as we spent quite a lot...