米匠Mi Jian 中山店 — Restaurant in Zhongshan District

My two cents on Mi Jian: basically a Instagram sushi place with mediocre food.

Appetizers: the tuna served in one of the appetizers wasn’t even supermarket quality. The texture just felt very flimsy.

“Toro”: The texture was slightly dense, yet not buttery enough to be the typical melt-in-your-mouth toro. It shouldn’t even be called toro as it felt more like akami with the insufficient amount of fat. Fish tasted like albacore, instead of a higher grade tuna.

“Buri”: The fat and texture of this dish implied that this wasn’t a full grown Buri, but tasted more like Hamachi or even Kanto. It also had a slight fishy smell that was not dealt with.

Madai: The seasoning was decent but texture and cut of the fish made it too hard to chew through.

The rest was basically the same: mediocre food. They definitely aren’t traditional omakase; the chef placed amaiebi on top of a suspected ika — and the combination made it hard to appreciate the different pieces on their own and felt a little disgusting to chew together in my mouth.

The chef also sprinkled truffle cheese on flounder fin, which I personally consider sacrilegious as we couldn’t enjoy the taste of flounder fin. The truffle cheese didn’t even taste like truffle nor cheese.

The rice wasn’t vinegary enough, wasn’t the right temperature, and wasn’t cohesive enough, crumbling a few times. At no point did the fish and rice seem to be connected as they should. It wasn’t the feeling of nigiri, but of me happening to eat raw fish and seasoned rice at the same time.

Soup: Smelt nice, but taste was completely bland. We also suspect that it was cooked with filtered tap water, as the taste of chlorine remained.

Experience was so bad that I decided to leave and order donburi nearby for take out.

There were some good points. It’s easy to access (very close to the Zhongshan MRT station) and the staff were all very nice and polite. 1200NTD for a 15 course omakase? Seems worth at first — except the food........

I don’t think fine omakase dining should have the chef serving 12 customers all at once — part of my sushi experience is talking to the chef and hearing about his stories or about the dishes.

Of all the sushi places I’ve been to, I’ve also never been served with someone wearing a watch. Makes me wonder if she only washes her hand up to her wrist as opposed to all the way to her elbows, which should be done considering she’s reaching over the food counter to pour tea and pass out dishes.

Really, please stop calling it fusion when in all honestly it was just a lack...

When we passed the other night at Mi Jian, we checked spontaneously if they have seats available (as we have been at their Dazhi shop, where we had an excellent dinner), and we were in luck and got the last 2 seats at the table. Note that they just have one menu, and all the dishes are served to all customers at the same time. We joined just when the 3rd dish was served, but also got the first 2 dishes. We had no problem catching up....but then realized as we got on with the dinner the service speed became faster (for all). As they needed the seats and table for the next shift.... Towards the end it became awkward, as everything was taken away (it had to be washed for the next serve). The introduction by the chef were interesting, but cut out most time and very little conversation among us was possible. Another minus was the lack of air condition, the small room full of guests, became very warm and uncomfortable fast. Only after some discussion, we had to listen to all the problem and that the staff are also suffering, the air conditioner was switched on. There is only one menu, but towards the end you can add 1 or 2 dishes for an additional price, we felt the way this is done was not professional. The dishes were ok. Whereby that the chef is producing all the sushi's with bare hands without gloves (yes it was hot, and he claimed that he is sweating heavily) was for me not ideal. Yes, were lucky to get 2 seats, but we had a new...

Went in reading the reviews so I knew what not to expect - traditional Japanese omakase. This place attempts to be creative by torching and putting various sauces on the fish. At times, they do both. As other reviews have said, it overpowers the fish and you cannot taste the fish at all. For someone not expecting traditional sushi, this is a good option because of its relatively low price point. For myself, who loves traditional Japanese omakase, this was a hard pass.

One key point that I did not appreciate was that they did not provide your own pot of tea for refilling your teacup. Instead, while the servers constantly and diligently refills your tea, they take your little cup with their hand and refills it for you. As the cup is quite small, their fingers enclose where you place your lips. Now imagine, they refill tea for everyone in this way. It was very unpleasant and unsanitary - and an effective way to spread and transmit diseases especially COVID.

I hope the restaurant reads this and changes the way they refill tea because it was truly unappetizing for me to...