Niji Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Angeles

Niji was once the flagship of Japanese restaurants to visit, but it's service, quality, and taste have declined significantly. Allow me to explain:

Their wait staff is dressed up like cafeteria workers, wearing a plain white shirt, a red apron, and black slacks - nothing Japanese about it at all - the attire appeared to be more like a collectivist uniform of a cheap old eastern autocratic regime. The menus were old and dilapidated, barely hanging off the hooks and sticky. Speaking of sticky, the tables felt sticky and so did the floors. The chairs were not even matching the ambiance. And the ambiance was weird, there was an area blocked for barbequing dining or hot pot? The floor plan was just so off. Parking was ample, but at dinner time its packed. The guard was semi-helpful. He gave me the finger to just park about 50 meters away on another vendor's property, but then when walking back, I saw him magically make a space for a foreigner to take a double-parked spot closer to the door. When I asked if he could watch my car down the road, he shrugged and commented in Tagalog there wouldn't be much he could do.

Our experience during dinner time took place during someone's birthday and the birthday song music was blasted over their PA to about maybe 120 decibels, like full blown dance hall. The staff looked sad to be clapping for the foreigners who obviously looked like they acted like owners. In fact, the older local Kapampangans who were dining and had finished their meal took the blasting music with a disparaging facial cringe and as a cue to get up and they hurriedly scooted their way out of there. Planned? A strategy to turn the tables faster?

The quality and price.. lets talk about this. For 6 pieces of Tekka Maki sushi, the price had a sticker over it. 400 pesos. I ordered 4 orders of this with optimistic high hopes to be impressed. $8 USD is a lot for 6 pieces of anything in the Philippines. Sadly, the quality was complete "basura". The rice was stale, the cut was small, and the fish tasted like it had been there since last night. Looks like a supply chain + chef training issue had impacted this. For baseline of the readers of this review, I went to another sushi restaurant inside Clark, newer, cleaner and for 200 pesos, I got the same size with better rice and 8 pieces of Tekka Maki.

If we went back to about pre-pandemic, I would have given this place at least 4 stars. I liked Niji a lot then. It was quiet, the wait staff was a lot more pleasant and the food quality for price was great. I am just not sure if this restaurant is diversifying and re-strategized to cater to East Asian foreigners who helped them stay afloat during the pandemic or if the ownership changed hands. Whatever the reason is, I recommend you give a few other places in Angeles city a try that have the same quality for better price and are newer and cleaner. Let's hope Niji restores back to its glory days, but for now, I don't recommend dining here for romantic dating for locals or bringing business executives here...

Wow, has this place ever gone down hill. I've been coming here for a decade and the place was great, gave them 5 stars in 2019, but going back in 2023 it's woefull. Portions are smaller, prices are double. They refuse to cook anything at the Tepanyaki Station unless it's for 4pax now and you have to spend nearly 5k. They used to do a nice meal for two cooked at the same station, but now they can't be bothered, it has to be cooked in the kitchen instead. The waiting staff are hopeless, no idea where they're hiding, but after you get your menus they disappear and you have to hunt for them or go to the sushi bar and ask the chef to find someone for you to give your order. They finally deliver the sushi, but you have to get up and go to the sushi bar to get some chopsticks to eat because they don't give you any. They just plop your food down and disappear again. It's almost like you have to serve yourself there, even though they charge a service charge. The food was sub par. The salmon sashimi had bones in it, and when we actually managed to order a single order of Tepanyaki, which is cooked in the kitchen outside of view, they delivered it in a bowl filled with soggy half cooked vegetables swimming in water, like soup. The old staff were great, especially the head sushi chef, but this lot are invisible. Don't know what happened to this place but it must be under new management who's business policy is to cut costs, raise prices and under deliver on both food and service. Will not be going there again, too many other places now to accept this level...

I used to be so proud of this place. I live 5 min away and when me and my family craved for japanese food, this is where we went to. When friends from out of town visited, I used to always recommend this place. So when I came here today after a few years of not visiting, I felt so disappointed. Food became mediocre, place has gotten dirty, and the service is now one of the worst in town. There is only 1 visible server in the dining area while there are atleast 5 groups of diners. I told myself that I had to be patient since we came in late and it was probably the server's closing shift. I was patient until I saw 2 men and 1 woman, all in server's uniform, come out of the enclosed area. Apparently they were waiting on the hand and foot of 2 "VIP" diners. There could have been 3 servers in the main dining area but that wasn't what they chose to do. Instead, they assigned a grumpy, lone person to handle everyone's dining experience and as anyone would expect, it was horrible. Oh and BTW, a small cockroach merrily raced across our table while we...