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29 Dec 2013
Mizuya has its perks: a clean, different and futuristic feel aesthetically; friendly staff with frequent assistance; the genius of putting cocktails, karaoke and Japanese food in the same enterprise. But a number of things kept it from reaching its expected potential. We didn't end up staying for karaoke, so this is just a review of our dining experience.
The restaurant's design is interesting and unlike most, split into scores and scores of wooden booths you navigate through like a maze. Our table number was in the 80s, so I assume there would be close to or over a hundred different booths in the maze altogether. However, no booth was directly aligned with another, meaning you'd still have your privacy despite being surrounded by people, which was nice.
One of Mizuya's major "selling points" is its touch screen ordering style. This may sound phenomenal and unbelievably exciting to some, although this feature is becoming increasingly common around Sydney. At the end of each booth is a fixed screen on which you order from a vast range of different Japanese food styles - sushi and sashimi, kushiyaki, rice and noodles - and of course drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and dessert.
For a group of eight, this became tiresome really fast.
The two people sitting closest to the screen had to do all the ordering work for everyone else, as the screen was fixed in its place. We all ordered different things at different times and felt pressured to choose as soon as we could, not wanting our friends to have to keep scrolling. The device was quite glitchy as well - I've been to other touch-screen sushi restaurants which use iPads and are quick and easy to navigate, but this would simply not work. We would press the "Next" button or try to order something, and it would crash for a few seconds, then click five different things at once, and we'd have to cancel and start again.
Ordering our food was quite a tiresome affair. We soon gave up and asked the waitress for hard copy menus - she gave us one (between eight people!) which was a basic, text-only list version of what was on screen. By the time we'd finished ordering, the two seated on the inside fervently regretted their choice of seating.
Most of the food was good. As Japanese cuisine tends to go, the menu featured small, expensive portions, generally ranging from about $5 to $20 per course. This may not seem like much, but keep in mind you'd have to order at least two or three to really fill up.
I ordered sashimi ($9.80), marbled beef ($5.80) and salmon nigiri ($8.50).
The sashimi was some of the best I've had - very fresh and soft. At $1.40 per piece it was pricier than most Japanese restaurants I've been to, but this was to be expected as an upscale restaurant, rather than a sushi train.
The marbled beef was basically just meat skewers - they were cooked well, but still overpriced in my opinion.
At $1.70 per piece the salmon nigiri wasn't too bad - certainly cheaper than Sushi Bay, which was surprising. The quality wasn't the best however. The ends of every salmon piece were chewy and hard - to be expected from a lower-level sushi train, but not from a restaurant like this.
For dessert we ordered the vanilla ($3) and green tea ($3.50) soft serves, and I decided to try the "green tea creme brûlée" ($7.50), which I'd never had before. A couple of my friends had decent soft serves, but one or two were noticeably melting by the time they got to us, which was just not good enough. The creme brûlée was great though, and I say that as someone who isn't a big fan of green tea. It was bigger and better than I expected.
The waitstaff were commendable, immediately accommodating to requests like hard-copy menus, serviettes and a knife and fork for one of my friends. They were also frequently around to clear empty dishes and make sure things were going okay, which was great.
Overall - good assistance, mostly decent food, interesting style but terrible functionality for bigger groups. The whole notion of "dining and karaoke" immediately suggests this is a place you would come with a bigger group, rather than with just one other person, but the dining style struggles to accommodate bigger groups.
In other words, I'd only recommend this place to groups of two or three… meaning you'd have a whole booth to yourself, pay more than you would at a sushi train, and in a group that small probably wouldn't stick around for karaoke anyway.
Approximate cost:
$5-$20
