Taisho Japanese Restaurant, Zetlands

In celebration of FCBA's second anniversary, a special lunch event was held at Taisho's new store in Zetlands. For those that have never ventured to Mascot, you wouldn't have heard of Taisho's flagship store (join the boat, guys), which specialises in BBQ wagyu beef.

Outside Restaurant

The restaurant is located on street level of the East Village shopping centre, close to the car park entrance so you can't really miss it. Lined with double-storey windows, the restaurant provides ample natural light inside and the interior decor naturally draws the eye from the ground floor to ceiling.

The celebratory meal started off with a large selection of dishes including:

• Sashimi salad - one of the limited sources of vegetables for this meal and topped with pieces of various sashimi, including salmon, tuna, whitefish and cooked prawn.

Mixed Sashimi Salad

• Sashimi - a variety of fresh sashimi, including salmon, tuna, kingfish, scallop, clam, sea bream. Everyone on the table had never seen the red clam before and therefore wasn't game enough to eat it, so I did (it didn't taste particularly different from a normal clam/mollusc).

Deluxe Sashimi

• Nigiri Sushi - I personally tried the scallop nigiri, which was unexpectedly salty (not sure what the small green blob was).

Small Sushi Set

• Karaage chicken - a hit across the table with its thin, crunchy batter coating the bite-sized, juicy chicken.

Karaage Chicken

• Pork gyoza - filled with the typical pork & cabbage mix and pan-fried to perfection.

Pork Gyoza

• Assorted tempura - the basket contained one piece of prawn, fish, pumpkin, eggplant and zucchini. The tempura batter was thin and crispy but unfortunately a few pieces (e.g. the tempura fish) was overly greasy/oily.

Assorted Tempura

Then came the main highlight of the meal - BBQ beef:

Table Setting Around Open Charcoal Grill

Three plates of beef were handed out to each table with no expenses spared as wagyu beef was served, which just melted in the mouth:

Various Types of Beef

Interestingly, small portions of kale were used as decoration on each plate of beef but these were quickly discarded. Along with beef, we were given a platter of various vegetables (including mushroom, cucumber, pumpkin, lettuce) and a small foil container of buttered corn to cook on the grill:

Mixed Vegetables

This was all followed by an epic two-layer lemon vodka cake, created by Black Velvet:

Birthday Cake

Slice of Cake

The Leftovers

Despite the size, there wasn't quite enough serves to go around (sort of weird how staff were eating from the cake before all guests were served) so I ended up with just a giant lollypop and consoled myself with Bravo Gelato.

Selection of Bravo Mini Cones
(Hazelnut flavour in focus)

Overall, the food served at Taisho was most certainly good quality and fresh but I am hesitant to even think about how much this meal really cost. 🙈


Food: ✰✰✰✰
Service: ✰✰✰
Atmosphere: ✰✰✰
Overall: ✰✰✰ 1/2
Summary: Japanese BBQ treat


Disclaimer: MSG Cafeteria was invited as a guest of  Food Critics & Bloggers Australia to Taisho Japanese Restaurant and all food and drinks consumed were paid for by the event sponsors. Thanks to the team at Taisho for hosting and serving up some yummy food!