I remember this as a lovely place with good food (circa 2014). Hadn't been in a while, so decided to get some takeaways last week. The food was horrid. The chicken sweetcorn soup was just sweet. No balance of flavour. The Hot and Sour soup was super watery. The springrolls were tiny and just basically the dough. The Salmon handroll wasn't too bad, but I've definitely had better. Also for the crispy beef, it was like the place ran out of salt. Absolutely zero flavour. I will not be back.

I have been a regular patron of this restaurant, but after the service that I have received tonight and the rudeness of management I will not eat there again. This is truly a pity seeing as I truly enjoyed the food and the service use to be excellent. The major selling point of Yamazaki is their bottomless sushi buffet for R148. This has always been my favourite seeing as I can eat a lot and above the sushi you are allowed to order starters and specific side dishes as well. Tonight I was informed for the first time that there are certain limits that have been place on the number of dishes that you are allowed to order. This is in direct contradiction with what is stated in the menu seeing as the words “all” and “bottomless” are used. After ordering what I have ordered since I have started eating at Yamazaki (when they opened under prior management) I was informed that I cannot get what I ordered. I took this up with management and she just stated that those are the rules (these rules have never applied in the past and I eat more than twice a month at Yamazaki). Tonight the wait staff was also incredibly incompetent. We (2 guest) were the only clients in the restaurant and finding a waitress (there were 3 of them) to serve you was a near impossible task. They would either be sitting outside chatting or they all would disappear into the kitchen only to reappear 10 minutes later. I will make a point of informing all my friends that also frequent Yamazaki to take their business elsewhere. To anyone that is reading this review there is a great sushi place at the Watermeyer shopping centre not far from Yamazaki and for the same price you actually get bottomless sushi. The restaurant’s name is Tataki.

When we then uncovered the plastic from the sushi, the ginger was a gray/pink and the salmon was slimy feeling and tasted un-fresh. The decorative cucumber laid on the plate also had the texture of cucumber that had been left far too long in a bar fridge. The overall presentation and quality of the sushi was of such a poor standard that we decided to drive back to the restaurant and return the plate of uneaten sushi. The Asian woman managing the establishment argued with us that the food was fine and that the gray ginger was the same they had been using for the last four years. Yet, we’ve ordered sushi from them at least twice a month over the last year and never have had ginger that looked like this. The woman decided to phone her manager and spoke in an Asian language to him for about five minutes, all the time gesturing at us like we were horrible customers. When put on the phone with the manager, it was almost impossible to understand him due to the poor connection. When we returned the phone to the woman, she went on to speak in an Asian language, gesturing at us again and seemingly arguing with the manager that she didn’t want to provide us with a refund for at least half of the food returned (which was the equivalent of one of the platters we ordered). Having never returned food to any restaurant, I was stunned that Yamazaki refused to take into account a customer complaint. The manager finally gave her permission to give us a free “lunch box” when we ordered food from in the future (which is by no means the same value of what we returned). The woman was so rude and unpleasant, however, that I can only encourage people to not eat at the restaurant because if the food is not of the standard a customer would expect, the restaurant will turn you away and tell you it’s your problem. Shocking, terrible service and terrible food. Don’t take a risk of eating there, I won’t be surprised if we wake up tomorrow with food poisoning.