Richmond Ninkazu Sushi

2024 they finally brought back the self serve stations. Here you can get your own miso soup, sunomono, fried rice, mango pudding and other DIY desserts.

Back in 2023, they didn't even have sunomono back on the menu like pre‐COVID. And, you had to order miso soup and wait.

The self serve station makes it much better.

Went there for lunch. The thickness and length of the nigiri sushi is much better than last year, which was paper thin. Tempura comes even comes hot now. Now it is worth it to come here. Their karaage is still dry though.

All I CAN'T eat...

I guess I am one of those who loves buffets during my youngling years and I can only imagine the buffet places would rather not have me back the second time around lol. Fast forward it to nowadays, I am having a hard time getting by the first round?!?

My buddies and I used to frequent Kingsway sushi and this place (when it was Richmond sushi before). I haven't been back here ever since they changed management.

Coming back here, this pace was more of a rearrangement rather than renovation as far as how I remembered it was before. A casual atmosphere with a spacious layout. There's a little self serve session for soups, salads and desserts now.

Here was the food I ordered, AYCE $43.95/person;

1. Miso soup, surprisingly it was quite hot at the self serve station.
2. Grilled garlic mussels, chicken wings, prawn tempura, oyster motoyaki. All were lukewarm, a couple of the oyster motoyaki had a bit of sands?!?
3. Bbq beef ribs, deep fried tofu, beef udon, mango pudding. Tofu was hard as a rock, beef ribs were okay, beef udon was cold and the beef was dry, mango pudding was good.
4. Salmon teriyaki was overcooked and dry, pan fried vegetables were undercooked, beef teriyaki was old and dry, vegetable tempura was lukewarm.
5. Salmon, tuna, hamachi, hokkigai, saba, tako, toro, amaebi sashimi. Everything was okay except for the amaebi, it absolutely wasn't fresh! The hokkigai was a bit wrinkly and chewy?
6. Beef tataki. Was kinda tasteless and still semi frozen.
7. Unagi, chopped scallops, masago, tamago, ebi nigiris. They were okay.
8. Salmon oshi, tempura roll, avocado roll, salmon crab roll. Pretty basic.

Overall, it was a very causal atmosphere, however, it's missing that vibrant busy energy that it used to have when it was Richmond Sushi.

The service was okay, a bit on the low energy side but had attempted efforts.

As for the food; the sushi could be a bit more fresh, especially the amaebi, toro and hokkigai. The cooked food was obviously precooked and place on warmers to serve when ordered.

I didn't know why I even ordered the 2nd round, maybe my Asian side kicked in, needed to stuff my face till I feel belt unbuckles itself?!? Anyways, it's more of an All I Can't Eat nowadays..

I LOVE SUSHI... but this is worse than worse.
It's not cheap. They do have a very extensive menu with lots and lots to order from all the rolls you ever desired, lots of different "fresh" fish, fried tempura's, agedeshi tofu, beef tartar, terriyaki dishes.... you get the point. They have an extensive menu to feed thee pickiest and most hungry famished, starving Soul....

A few bites... I had to stop. I am giving 2 stars because
1 Star for this place to be crowded & having people waiting to get in.... so I gotta give you credit for feeding palates. ( my palate hated me during dinner) I had to wash it down with that disgusting and dirty tasting tea... sorry but true.

2nd star for the wonderful service. Staff are all very kind, polite, and very friendly. ( thank you! You are all amazing!)

Unfortunately.....Salmon tasted weird- it is farmed Atlantic but the wild salmon had a weird texture to it and taste was not the usual. The tuna cones were tasteless. Tuna tasted different.
I did like the agedeshi tofu. It was huge pieces and no taste but I love their agedeshi tofu.

Our entire dinner was disappointing because it was $48 each.... and the quality, flavour, and taste were all off.

I hope they change the quality of food because this would definitely be one of my favourite and frequent restaurants because I love love sushi!

I used to come here when it was named Richmond Sushi. When it changed its name to Richmond Ninkazu, the food went downhill. Really fast. If you want to come, RUN AWAY TO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

The quality of the hot food was okay, but the quality when it came to sushi pieces just wasn't there. It wasn't fresh sushi, and the menu is super limiting.

OVERPRICED and MEDIOCRE, if you ask me.

The only good thing was a scallop cone.

In terms of service, they cut orders. For example, if you asked for 3 orders of something, they will give you less than what you ordered. They are super stingy when it came to giving out the portions, so why even bother to open an All You Can Eat restaurant if you can't give people what they paid for?

The service is so bad, they argued with the customer, and barely come to service you. If you don't speak Chinese, good luck coming here.

The ambiance sucks, nobody seems to come here. The music is really awful, and its just so bland. There's also no heat in here. It's so cold you need to have your jacket on for your entire meal.

To be honest, they don't even deserve one star. Yelp needs a bare minimum of one star for it to be a review, but I would totally give 5 negative stars if that was possible.

Came to try the AYCE sushi here with a big group of 13 people for Friday dinner around 6:30.

I'm impressed by the large groups they can accommodate here, as there was another table that looked like they had 20+ people. It wasn't too crowded, but definitely make a reservation ahead of time especially if you have a larger group.

The way it works is there are 3 tiers of AYCE menus. We went with the core menu ($26.95 pp), which only has nigiri and no sashimi. The next tier up is Lite, at $33.95 pp, and the most expensive tier is the Deluxe, at $40.95 pp.

Each table has 90 min to order and eat. We tried to ordering asap after getting seated, as we thought food would take a while to come out, but it came out within minutes of ordering each time for all 3 rounds. Not sure how they were SO fast here. We were all kind of shocked.

We had a big group and were able to try most of the core menu. To be honest, nothing was amazing, but I thought the chopped scallop nigiri was the best sushi item, followed by the salmon nigiri. For the non-sushi items, everyone agreed the beef short rib, karaage, and chicken teriyaki were the best, though I personally found the karaage a bit bland.

I wouldn't recommend getting any of the sushi cones as it's 90% rice and 10% sushi. We also ordered a ton of the seafood motoyaki, which was a huge mistake, because it was one of the least favorite items we tried.

Make sure you don't order too much, since there's a note on the menu that wasted food will be charged according to a la carte prices.

There's plenty of free parking as Ninkazu is located in a plaza. Make sure you park INSIDE the plaza as the front entrance to the restaurant is located inside. Otherwise if you park near their back door, you'll end up like me and have to walk all the way around to get to their front entrance.

Don't go there! The food was terrible, the ambiance was sad. The worst was the service, it just doesn't exist. They won't even look at you, servers look mad all the time and the cashier will ask for a tip and if it doesn't look like enough for her, she will look at you with disdain. Horrible experience.

This place has definitely gone down hill from when I came 15 yrs ago LOL.

Sushi sizes are tiny and quality is not fresh.

I used to come all the time in college with friends.. it was a staple for wwu kids. Now with all the other fun innovative food choices richmond has to offer I would definitely skip on Richmond sushi.

A $21.95 all you can eat lunch in 2024 deserves an automatic 5 stars, no questions asked. This is how we remember all you can eat 20 years ago, and in the past few years, even before the pandemic, most places had already started folding because they couldn't make it. The sushi is actually quite good and although they do give you 80% of what you order, when looking around us we understood why - people were wasting food. The lady at the table next to us uneaten sandwiched rice from nigiri between dirty plates and gave them to the server - eww, and what a waste! Anyways the nigiri and roll selection is pretty good. Despite their customers, and short staffed servers, service was sufficient and the self serve miso soup and mango pudding station was also appreciated.

Love this place. Take my family here all the time. Bbq salmon sushi, bbq unagi sushi, fried shrimp, short ribs, oyster Moyotoki

Slow service, food is mediocrely done without very detailed care. The waiters and waitresses does not show great care and politeness when serving customers and responding to questions and requests.
The restaurant environment is okay, bit noisy but you get your own semi-private eating space. We had a loud crying baby behind us.