Banzai Restaurant (Auckland CBD, New Zealand)

This small place is a hidden gem, tucked in Dominion Road together with other popular restaurants, this place is a must visit for those Japanese lovers out there. Located in a compound where small eateries are tucked together this is quite easy to miss especially at night. Parking is quite hard as well so if you can’t find something directly in front of the premises the side streets are your next best option like what we did the last time we were here.

Typical of any Japanese restaurants the menu is quite the same where you can find sushi, tempura, udon and soba but here you have a bit more option like the katsu curries, yakiniku, shogayaki, oyako and other unpopular Japanese side dishes and appetizers.

This means we have to order at least one of those dishes not usually sold on other Japanese restaurants here like the Japanese Curry Katsu Pork ($15.00), this Japanese curry is served with amazingly delicious juicy pork tonkatsu on a Golden Curry sauce.

We also then grabbed some stir fried noodles in the form of Beef Yaki Udon ($12.00) served with very tender beef pieces this thick Japanese noodles is a pleasure to the palate.

A visit in a Japanese restaurant will never be complete without a sushi order on the side so we grabbed some Salmon Teriyaki Sushi ($12.00)

As well as Samocado Sushi ($13.00), basically a sushi made with fresh salmon and avocado. As salmon and avocado lovers this was heaven in a plate for us, add to that the amazing plating for both sushi, it was the bomb!

Finally we had some Chicken Teriyaki served with fresh salad and juicy teriyaki gravy ($14.00), good it was not served with rice like usual Japanese restaurants do as the rice from the sushi was enough for us already.

We loved it here, the staff was fantastic, very helpful and friendly. I even remembered before we had a birthday dinner here and we asked the kitchen staff if they can surprise the celebrant with a cake. The place do not sell cakes but even though that was the case they still managed to make something for a surprise, they made a dessert and placed some candles in top of it then turned all of the lights on the restaurant before it was served. Best of all the dessert was free.

Apart from great people behind this place the food here was amazing, it was fresh and seasoned real well and like most Japanese places out there they do their plating really well. So are we going back in here? Definitely I just hoped it’s near our place so we will have another alternative to our favourite Japanese resto near our place.

Banzai Restaurant
Address: 583 Dominion Rd, Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand 1041
Phone: +649 630 4489
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BANZAI-RESTAURANT-90867246107/