Hei Sei Ni Jyu Ni Japanese Restaurant    平成二十二日本料理  

We booked a table for 14 persons 2-3 weeks back, after reading good reviews about the restaurant. But on the day of the dinner, people started to worry about a potentially disastrous dinner after reading a recent spate of poor reviews about its services. But we decided to brave it and give it a chance to redeem itself. Perhaps because of our rock bottom expectations, our experience wasn't that bad, in fact, it was a rather pleasant evening.

A staff called earlier in the day to confirm numbers, and I said we only have 13 people now, which he acknowledged politely. One of us (surprisingly) had a 5% off coupon and a free slab of uni, which meant we were already starting dinner on a high note. We were given a room which fitted a square table and all of us in snugly, but we didn't feel too cramped, and there was enough room to put all the food on the table. Drinks were included and most of us opted for soft drinks. We had to ask a couple of times before they gave us 2 flasks of hot tea, and sometimes I had to bring the flasks out to be refilled, but otherwise there was no lack of beverages. A dish of wasabi came after we requested it twice, but other requests for napkins, extra tempura sauce etc. came pretty promptly. The food started rolling out within 10 minutes of ordering, and it just kept coming. We didn't keep count of how much we ordered, but by 9:45 we were all full to the brim.

We ordered heaps of stuff, almost everything on the sashimi/sushi/grilled food menu, and most things on the fried menu and also some vegetables, snacks, rice and udon. Most things were pretty average - average quality, average portions (but that's good so people won't waste so much food). Slightly better were the grilled eel which came in a thick syrupy sauce, the tomato salad, the sauce on the tofu salad (but the tofu was way too soft and it was impossible to pick it up without using a spoon to scoop), the stir fried vegetables, and the salmon sashimi. Items that fared slightly worse were the tamago sushi (sloppy, poorly textured and no flavour), hotate (TINY pieces, more like pearl-sized scallops), deep fried chicken (too dry, dark chocolate brown colour) and chicken cartilage (hard like pebbles).

Even though one of the staff accidentally sloshed some ice and sashimi onto the floor when entering the room, they quickly replaced the food and wiped the floor clean. Then it was our turn to pour some ice onto the table when trying to move the massive dish of sashimi around, and the staff promptly gave us a cloth to clean up the table (if they had done it for us that would have been even better, but we were all capable adults so we didn't feel like bothering them).

Food was average, service has improved, overall a decent choice in the Dark Side for a big crowd of people with big appetites.