Jizo Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in South Island

We came last weekend with big expectations, cause of the reputation of great Japanese food at that restaurant. However, our experience did fall way off the mark and by a mile. I could not understand how did the restaurant run out of sashimi material in the middle of the busiest time of the weekend? Tuna fine, could be hard to source when fish markets are closed, but there’s plenty of salmon in the supermarket at all times. But let’s talk about the items we picked from the menu. Firstly we ordered salmon sushi with mango on top. That mango was so discoloured and mushy, have a strong feeling of chefs using canned fruit instead of fresh one. If true, then it’s a cheap and certain way to ruin the dish. Secondly, we ordered beef ramen. The key of ramen is the broth, which in this case was as bland as it could possibly be- lacked strong flavours and tasted very unseasoned. Same with beef that the dish was served with. Veggies (greens and mushrooms), tasted raw and made no sense with the rest of ramen. Was also questioning the abundance of noodles that I never had any of my previous ramens being served with. And been recently all over Asia, never seen dish as bad as this.

Don’t see myself visiting the restaurant ever again, neither recommending it to anyone. Will happily accept...

I recently visited this restaurant for the first time and unfortunately, my experience was far from satisfactory. The waitress who greeted us seemed to have an attitude and was racist when we politely asked to be seated away from the entrance. She refused to clean a table for us, claiming she had "something else to do," even though we offered to wait. Moments later, she cleaned the same table for new customers who arrived after us. Additionally, the overall environment was overcrowded and noisy, making it difficult to enjoy a relaxing meal.

Moreover, when we wanted to order our mains, none of the waitresses would acknowledge us or take our order. We had to walk over to the lady in charge of seating to get any attention, but even then, the wait time was unacceptable. In the end, we left without ordering and went to Takeichi around the corner, which is undoubtedly the best Japanese restaurant in Dunedin. The food and customer service there were outstanding.

Overall, I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone. The staff's attitude was disappointing, and the service was inadequate. It's best to go elsewhere if you're looking for a satisfying...

This was by far the worst Japanese food and restaurant experience I've had. We walked in and were handed menus and told to choose a seat and then order at the counter. We ordered, (the woman at the counter was rude) we then had to pay for it before we'd even eating it (that should have been a warning). We had to fetch our own water, cutlery and napkins. Why they have so many staff on if they're not there to actually provide a service baffled me. The beer was flat and old and the cider was equally flat. They changed these for us. The food arrived and was even more disappointing. The unagi don was 6 small 20cent pieces of eel and rice and a token piece of broccoli. It was pathetic. The spicy miso soup had chilli oil poured on top and apparently that's appealing. The spicy tuna roll was a joke. It was tuna with plain rice (not even sushi rice) and spicy sprinkles put on top. This is not even close to how it should be made. All other meals were plain tasting and average. We demanded our money back and left. Never ever going back, never recommending it to anyone. They never apologised either. What a...