Kamakura East Sushi and Ramen Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Belfast

Kamakura

This relatively new addition to the ever expanding East Belfast food scene was a welcome surprise - but really, plastic trees in the sushi? What a blast from the past!

And it’s BYOB £3.00 Corkage

We’ve driven past this restaurant a few times and it always looked intriguing. After hearing a few favourable comments, and having a rare free Saturday evening, we decided to give it a shot.

We made a booking and were glad we did, because it was packed, and walk-ins were being politely turned away.

There was an eclectic combination of customers which really gave the place a buzzy vibe.

We ordered several dishes: to start- Spicy Tuna Roll Yasai Gyoza Kushiyaki & Edamame

And for mains- Salmon teriyaki soba & Tofu steak

It was all excellent quality and it arrived when cooked, so this meant that we had time to savour each dish. If you’re in a rush, the service may feel a little slow, but we were delighted that we had time to enjoy each course before another arrived.

There were two slightly odd things which confused us somewhat - we expect to be offered chopsticks in an Asian restaurant but when we sat at the table we were told that the restaurant had no chopsticks left. However when we looked round, one table of two which hadn’t yet arrived had chopsticks on theirs. We asked if could we have them, so the waitress then supplied us with those chopsticks. However during our meal we discovered that other tables were having chopsticks delivered to them on request and at the end of the evening, all the tables being set for lunch the next day were furnished with, yes you guessed it, chopsticks!! We were told there weren’t any! It just all felt a little bit weird.

Secondly, a slightly retro peculiarity is the abundance of plastic foliage decorating the spicy tuna roll which felt completely unnecessary even though it made us smile about “Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees” by The Leyton Buzzards, and Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees”. Ah nostalgia!

Overall we were really very pleasantly surprised at this addition to the area, providing fantastic quality Japanese food in an eclectic environment. It had a buzzing atmosphere and we will...

Food is great but had an unpleasant experience recently. Ordered two mains and two sides for my partner and myself through Deliveroo. After patiently waiting for an hour and twenty minutes the food arrived minus my main meal.

I rang the restaurant to explain the situation and the girl who answered the phone passed me onto another guy who was pretty rude, tried to blame everyone else but the restaurant themselves. Told me that the deliverooo driver must have forgotten to give me it, (he had not) even though they had previously told me that the meal was still in the restaurant , they tried to lie and blame others..

He told me I can give you a refund but we can't bring the food out to you....

What was meant to be a nice night in with a takeaway had turned into me watching my partner eat her meal while I just sat there hungry. She felt bad and didn't want to eat her food as i was sitting with an empty plate. Totally ruined the evening.

In the end they rang me back and after giving every excuse under the sun said the meal was there and I could come and collect it myself if I wanted.

Well, I was hungry so went to pick up the meal myself and guess what it was the same meal, from the original order, now cold. Didn't offer to make me a fresh meal. Just gave me the meal that had been sitting there since they forgot to pack it. Cold soggy and disgusting. Shame as their food had been great in the past but this experience has left a bad taste...

We where so excited to finally go there and tried it out unfortunately our experience was ruined at the start. I got refused to dine because I didn't make a COVID test. I'm person that recover from covid and I give them email that I got tested positive while I was searching for my certificate on the phone.. waitress said that I can't sit in coz I haven't make a test, then came with the test and said I have to take it or I need to leave of course I refuse it and explain everything but she was demanding then she call out some guy that was demanding to get me tested too, I said again I'm looking for my certificate that I recovered and when I found it and show him he was like oh "that is ok, I can scan that"... Lol seriously? They couldn't wait, they made me so uncomfortable and stressed out! And after some time when we start searching through the menu another waitress came to us and ask" did you make the test already?"... This was just an wonderful top up after whole nonsense we experience! No apologies for whole situation neither! While waiting for our order we got weird vibe of 3 waitress staring at us constantly. Coming to food that was average and they did run out of sea bass.. Whole time waitress where off and on weirdly staring at us again which was uncomfortable but fair enough they just seemed bored .. Waste of time and unfriendly staff do not recommend at all and will never...