Sushi Zanmai — Restaurant in Boulder

I’m giving this three stars solely because it doesn’t seem fair to give one star based on our experience when we didn’t eat there.

We were very excited to try this place after reading great reviews. Idk when management changed, but what we experienced was the opposite of these years’ worth of raving reviews. We got on the wait list and were told it would be at least 30 minutes, with a facial expression that definitely indicated we were in for the long haul. So we went to grab a drink around the corner. 9 minutes later I got a text our table was ready. That’s nice but idk how they got it so wrong. We had to abandon our fresh drinks at this other spot. When we arrived, a group was about to be sat so I flagged the hostess down to let her know we arrived, as it looked like the only table left was being given away. She said acknowledged us and asked for a few minutes. Unfortunately my fears were correct, the last table had been sat and instead we were being given the one table in the house that had traditional floor seating. As in, the table is low to the ground and you’re sitting on little deflated cushions. I’m sure this is supposed to be a big deal, but just one look at my group would have alerted the staff that this wasn’t going to work for us. At the very least, I think this should be something that guests are made aware of and can opt out of- especially when disabilities are involved. When I told the hostess that wouldn’t work for us, she looked shocked (but not concerned). Thankfully that group that was sat ahead of us overheard and jumped in. They actually wanted the special floor seating and switched with us. Great. After that, it unfortunately kept going downhill. We were only given one menu for the four of us, so looking took awhile. Our waitress came to us nearly immediately expecting to take our entire order. We put in drinks haphazardly, and asked for more time. 10 minutes later we had to flag her down to ask a question about the menu, and as we were saying “let’s order an appetizer” she walked off. She never returned. 10 minutes later we decided to leave. The menu online isn’t reflective of the menu in the restaurant. Some stuff is lunch only but that’s not clear online. We’d decided to come here so everyone in our group could be accommodated (not everyone likes fish, but hey good friends compromise) and finding out the menu differences, on top of the absent service, was the final straw. We managed to pay for our drinks and left. It’s hard to accurately articulate the scene here but it was just a bizarre experience from beginning to end. The vibe was totally off and I expect our dinner would have taken 2.5 hours based on the 25 minutes we were there.

I’m sure the food is great but when everything else is chaotic, that doesn’t matter much...

Great sushi, terrible service.

I'm not one to go out of my way to write reviews, but Zanmai has me puzzled. It used to be my favorite sushi place in town, but has recently become a place I will no longer bring my business. After multiple awful experiences all revolving around service(or lack thereof), I'm calling it quits on Zanmai. 3 experiences within 2 years come to mind. 1: Made a reservation for a table of 6 on graduation weekend, was told it would be fine. Showed up on time, to find out we did not have the right sized table, so had to squeeze into a small 4 person booth with 2 plastic folding chairs stuck on the end. 2: had the worst service I've ever experienced, took over 20 minutes to come greet our table, and even after that, took very long to come get our order. Wasn't overly busy, either. 3: the kicker. We were enjoying our meal, wrapping up drinks, when we were asked to leave to make room for a reservation. Never before have I been asked to leave a restaurant to make room for another party. But, we were told "It's okay, you have some time, the reservation isn't for another minute". Not sure why our party had to immediately leave the restaurant when there were other open tables. Wish I received the same level of service when I made reservations here.

Enjoy the food, it is tasty. But I feel like I'm inconveniencing them when I bring my money in....

I don't see what all the hype is about. I hear from lots of people about how great this place is, how it's the "Best Sushi in Boulder" and yeah... no. The service was awesome and they have Orion beer so things got off to a good start for us. Once our food started arriving, things went downhill. We went during happy hour and got the veggie tempura with shrimp, some sashimi, a roll and the seafood salad. We paid 14 dollars for the tempura, which was less than an ounce of veggies and 2 pieces of shrimp. The quality of fish we got for our sashimi wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either and the knife work was sloppy. The roll we ordered was missing ingredients and only thing good about the seafood salad was the cucumber, of which there was a lot. The crab tasted like it was out of a can, the octopus was overcooked and the shrimp tasted like it had been sitting in the cooler for a few days. We left still hungry and went somewhere else to get more food instead of ordering more. I understand that you take a risk going to any restaurant during happy hour, but with as many chefs as they have on staff you'd think a higher level of quality control would be manageable. There are much better sushi restaurants in Boulder and the Boulder...