Mizu Izakaya — Restaurant in Denver

As a personal chef and overall foodie it is really difficult to give a review like this. Generally I love all foods and am not picky, I just love good flavors and I’m open to just about anything.

My wife and I decided to give Mizu a try for my 31st birthday celebration. We had a long list of places we were deciding between like Tavernetta and Ash Kara and other hot spots in denver. But suddenly I came across Mizu instagram and man the food looked out of this world! Kudos to whoever is running this page because the food looked 100x better than it actually is. In fact the food looked so good we chose this place above a couple michelin spots thinking we’d get a better meal. BOY WAS I WRONG!

Mizu was 100% one of the worst meals and restaurant experiences I’ve ever had! I’m honestly shocked that a restaurant could lack such flavor and not just lack flavor but be genuinely disgusting.

Let’s start with the service , my wife had marked down that we were doing a special celebration for my birthday and would like some type of celebratory dessert or something. The host who was also the waitress surely saw this on our reservation but did not acknowledge any part of it. Honestly not a big deal but just a start of what was to transpire.

So my wife and I get seated and I will mention this restaurant is very beautiful and vibey, I love the decor and this maybe the only positive part of the evening.

So we started with the Bao buns, the buns that are almost always a hit everywhere but these buns were stale and tasted super old, the meat inside the buns tasted like cheap Taco Bell meat with some kind of store bought sauce that wasn’t even good. At this point my wife and I are almost pretending we like it because we don’t want to accept that this was a complete fail. So ok the bao buns were bad let’s keep ordering and I’m sure the next dish will be amazing…

Boy were we wrong, my wife ordered the spider roll, which once again very hard to mess up a fried roll. But they used some sort of eel sauce that tasted like they poured straight fish sauce all over it. The flavor was so strong and putrid it tasted like we were eating week old rotten fish. My wife never does this but she literally had to spit it out and not eat that dish. My yellowtail roll that we got along with it is what we shared, this was about a 5/10 and not bad. And in hindsight this 5/10 was actually the highlight of the meal because it just kept getting worse.

Next few dishes come out , Brussels were terrible no flavor no sauce but fried flavorless Brussels. Next few dishes equally as bad. The sad part is we really thought this place was going to be good so we ordered multiple dishes at the beginning.

Now after all these terrible dishes I’m still looking for our main course and my wife decides to skip the main course because we’ve already spent so much on food that was bad. But I was looking for my home run shot, the dish that could save the night!

So I feast my eyes on what sounded like a truly wonderful dish. The Udon Uni Carbonara for $50! Yes it expensive but boy does that sound like a winner. So I shoot my shot and go ahead and order

5 minutes later my udon bowl comes out with rotten uni that tasted like I was drinking a bowl rotten fish water. This was the most disgusting uni I’ve ever tried and I’m surprised I didn’t get food poisoning from this. On to the the carbonara, there was no bacon or guancali so idk how they called this a carbonara and the noodles had a sauce comparable to a boxed easy mac. It was chalky , flavorless and tasted like buttered noodles my 4 year old son could make at home. My last shot at redemption totally ruined.

This experience was so terrible. After getting the check and seeing we had spent $250+ on a meal that was this bad my wife and I literally wanted to cry. Not because of the price but because my birthday dinner was ruined, we drove an hour each way from castle rock during traffic hour. And an experience that was supposed to make for an amazing night was an absolute fail.

SAVE YOUR MONEY AND...

Our sushi was great and the bartender taking care of us was very nice and gave us great service but it was the woman sitting next to us at the bar who unfortunately ruined our experience here. Of course I wouldn’t fault the restaurant if this was some random drunk woman but this woman kept telling us over and over that she was the manager of this restaurant and tonight was her night off. As a waitress myself, I’m usually very forgiving and don’t ever write bad reviews but I just want to reiterate that this isn’t for the restaurant itself, it’s for the woman who apparently manages this place that got obliterated next to my husband and I and made us and the couple on the other side of her uncomfortable. She kept trying to give me the free shots that she was being given by another bartender and was getting offended when I told her “no I don’t want your shot” and she kept pestering and asking me why. She kept reaching for my hand while I was in the middle of eating, reaching at our plate of sushi, she also took out her phone and started randomly filming my husband and I on Snapchat. We tried to ignore her and then when we did that, she kept talking in my ear. I literally could not scoot further away if I tried. We had just gotten our food so we wanted to sit and enjoy it because it was our first time here but we honestly could not get out of there fast enough so we had to box it up. Once we told her to leave us alone so we could at least finish our drinks, she started bothering the couple on the other side of her and they asked for their check almost right after we did. I can’t speak for them but they seemed to be on a date so I’d imagine the her bugging them probably led them to calling it a night as well. Again, the bartender taking care of us did a great job, but there was another bartender that was still feeding this manger shots of tequila when she had clearly been over served already. I know sitting at a bar instead of a table comes with the price of people who have had a few drinks but it was the fact that this woman apparently manages the place and was ruining people’s experience here that really threw me off. She should probably not openly tell people she manages this place when she’s drunk or she should consider going somewhere else to get drunk and not make her place of work look bad. On the plus side, the vibes at the restaurant are great, super fun, good music and the host was very friendly. The cocktails were good and service was fast! We wish we could’ve stayed to enjoy it but we would give it...

It started bad and kept getting worse! Went with the family (4) and had to step over vomit on the sidewalk just outside the front door. Once in on a Sunday at 5pm, it seemed more like a bar than restaurant due to the music level and bar patrons yelling. I have seen this trend on sushi places so didn't think too much of it.

We were seated and our waitress greeted our table with water after about 5 or so minutes (fairly slow). We ordered drinks, then three apps. Of the three apps, the brussels sprouts and jalapeno yellow tail were both very good. We then ordered sushi and entrees.

The sushi came out fairly quick and was good in terms of both presentation and quality. If I were to stop here, this is a 4-star review with the only reason not being a 5 is due to the slow service from a somewhat rude waitress.

Entrées started coming out, but from the time the first entre arrived to the last was a 15-minuite period. The first two entrées were noodles and we tried to get a fork (only had chopsticks), but the waitress was absent for about 10-minuites. When she brought us the A5 we ordered, she put the hot stone right in front of my wife and put fat on the stone to start. It splattered all over the place, including on my wife's clothing. The same thing occurred 5-minuites later when they final brought my wife her steak.

My wife's steak was cut into strips, but not bite sized pieces and they never brought us a steak knife. She tried using her teeth to cut the meat using the chopsticks, but it was a struggle. She only ate half of the steak. We ordered 4 ounces of A5 and it was the worst A5 I have ever had. Some marbling, but a lot of fatty chunks on the raw meat. One strip was just fat. I said something to the waitress and she was rude! The manager came over and they did take off half of the A5.

Overall, this place would be good for hip sushi with friends, but terrible for dinner, especially if you expect things like proper A5, eating with a steak knife or prompt...