Mr. Miyagi is a newly opened Japanese eatery and bar located in Windsor. After hearing a few good things and seeing some promising photos on instagram, I thought it'd be a cool place to check out.
Unfortunately most of my experience with Mr. Miyagi proved to be utterly disappointing and I doubt I'll ever return on my own volition.
For a place that tries so hard to look Japanese by plastering vintage Kirin beer posters and Japanese newspapers all over their walls and menus, they're probably as Japanese as a california roll. If they bothered to just do a tiny bit more research, they probably wouldn't have failed so much. After I noticed that the chopsticks were placed vertically instead of horizontally...I knew something was amiss.
There were a few other reasons why I left so unsatisfied, which i'll try to explain in this blog.
1. Firsltly, after being seated in a spacious booth the atmosphere was immediately ruined by the stench wafting toward us from the bathroom. It certainly did not get my appetite going.
2. Our first waitress was very nice but she obviously didn't know much about Japanese food. The way she butchered the word gyoza as 'guy-oh-za" or nigiri as 'nigehri' was kind of embarrassing but of course those are honest mistakes. However the second waitress was equally as nice but even more disappointing when she described the japanese omelette on our sushi platter as "a Japanese egg thing, I don't really know what it's called but it's sweet". It's never very reassuring when you know more than the wait staff.
3. Yes, the staff were nice but their incessant asking of if we wanted drinks started to get on my nerves. We were obviously not drinking as the majority of the table asked for mocktails (which were great) yet they still persisted.
4. The sushi and sashimi platter we ordered was just a complete disaster. We waited much longer than expected for it and when it did arrive I was almost....offended. Mr. Miyagi obviously didn't have a proper sushi chef or even a sushi knife from the look of our plate. The slices were ridiculously thick and looked as if they were hacked away with a butter knife. Some pieces were not clearly cut and were still stuck together, another even had a hole in it. The worst part was that they tried to hide these faults in the plating.
Don't even get me started on the nigiri sushi....the pieces were obviously mashed together by hand like a child with a mud pie until a sushi resembling shape emerged. What a bloody joke.
Thankfully there aren't many situations that deep fried food can not salvage and their Miyagi fried chicken with kyupi mayonnaise dipping sauce lived up to its reputation. Also their battered sweet corn, wagyu tataki and tempura battered crab roll proved to be popular items amongst the table.
***************************************************
The place looks very trendy and makes up for the lack of any Japanese food on Chapel street but I'd prefer Izakaya den any day.
