Shi Nian

Went there today and had the all you can eat hotpot and sushi combo. Though we didn’t order any sushi, it’s such a weird combo, only went there for hotpot. Got the deal on Groupon, but got to charge extra $ 10 for the broth, which is ridiculous and not that a good deal anymore. (They didn’t write broth is not included in the deal when we bought it, but after I complained to the Groupon site, they added it in and told me it’s in there, and it’s just I didn’t see it. Lol. Good job!) The service is ok, since she was nice and offered whatever we asked, could be better tho. The food is really bad, hotpot tastes really bad, not much flavor and didn’t like the sauce. Our soda water and coke were so plain and less flavor, so gross. Won’t recommend it at all.

I am totally not surprised your rating is is close to the lowest possible 1 star, yes if lowest is 0 star, you would have gotten 0.5 star at best.
There are two reasons we go on Groupon
1. We want a deal with no freaking hidden cost.
2. We want to know what we are getting based what you wrote in it.
Simple? clear?
You failed both.
$ 10 extra for soup might be normal for walk-​in customer, but it’s NOT freaking normal when you put it as a deal on Groupon or anywhere else. If you are going to charge 10 $ extra for the soup, put it in the Groupon price, because it’s MANDATORY, you cannot have hot pot without the soup, you expect us to eat it raw? If you charge us after we walk in the door, 1 star reviews are what you gonna get. Look at previous reviews.
We don’t get what we ordered, if we want to eat less meat, we will go to the Korean restaurant and spend $ 15 a person to get better qualify food with less meat.
You cannot give us 10 thin slices of meat (total 150 gram for 2 people AYCE, seriously?) when we clearly put 30 on the sheet. When we order another 20 on second order, you brought another 10 thin slices of meat. We didn’t pay a total of $ 51 (including minimum 10% tip just for pitying the servers working at this place) for two people and less than 1 lb of meat so we can be ripped off.
Nothing can save you at this point now.

I gave them one star because they changed our BBQ grill and refilled our water and tea (once). We had the AYCE menu and honestly, save yourselves the money and go somewhere else. Any other establishment on the block will be better, trust me. The sushi was dry and brittle and the BBQ items were a sight to behold (*sarcasm*). I HIGHLY doubt any of the staff is FOODSAFE certified because they gave us raw beef and raw squid on the same plate for BBQ! Isn’t that grounds for potential cross contamination?! Yikes.
In short, HOW IS THIS PLACE IN BUSINESS?!

This restaurant has the worst service ever. Three of us went there today and they messed up on 5 things that we ordered, including hot pot items as well as sushi. When we brought it up to the server, he was confused, didn’t understand the items that were on the menu (he spoke English fine but couldn’t tell us what things were, even when looking right at the items after they were delivered to us and sitting on our table), and then had the audacity to ask if we actually wanted what we ordered instead or if we had an allergy to the food given to us. 10 minutes later, he then tells us that they didn’t have what we ordered. We asked to speak to a manager or supervisor, and not too surprisingly, there wasn’t one there. The server who was «in charge» gave us our pop for free… big whoop. The food that we did receive was «alright», but it’s pretty hard to screw up hot pot when you’re just serving broth with raw ingredients. It’s extremely rare that poor service upsets me, but this was exceptional. It’s quite possible that monkeys run this restaurant… however in saying that, I feel like I’m insulting monkeys who might actually do a better job.

Went to Shi Nian on Robson tonight, never will again and I would never ever recommend this place to anyone, no matter how hungry they were or how badly they wanted to be treated. After standing in the door for six minutes, and free servers not seating us, I had to say «excuse me» to get them to come over, even though they saw us come in. Next upon being seated we were told that the Groupon we used that «included everything and two drinks» limited a portion of the menu, and two glasses of water (carbonated or regular), and the kicker: WE STILL HAD TO PAY $ 10 for the hot pot soup! Talk about false advertising. That’s correct they demanded an additional 10 $ on top of the 32 we paid for the Groupon. So the «HOT POT & SUSHI Groupon… CHARGES EXTRA FOR THE HOT POT… (and doesn’t serve the Sushi, read below).
Next, this is where it gets funny: First the waters were brought to us one glass at a time (talk about screwing the pooch), and then items one at a time randomly with people who sat after us receiving their orders faster, albeit also totally out of order. Sometimes it would be one or two pieces of this, or one or two pieces of that, and then a few later, totally out of order or reason whatsoever. It also goes without saying that I had to wave the order paper around in the air for eight minutes and then wait another three to have the order paper taken, as the staff just sort of walk around in circles not doing anything. What is this place?
Of our order, we only received 26 of the 80 or so items we ordered. Really easy stuff like this type of noodle or that type of vegetable, or this kind of sushi etc, nearly nothing arrived. I nicely asked the waitress if our food was coming, and was brushed off never to see them again about it. At one point the waitress even mocked us for being too white to handle the spicy dish. Imagine pulling that shit anywhere else? Can you believe the offensive audacity?
Round two is where it’s really fun: During round one, we received maybe half at most of the Sushi we ordered: round two however JUST DIDN’T COME. NOTHING. I even told the waitress who brought a random bowl of rice out of no where that we didn’t order that we were waiting on more items, and again, nothing. I’ve been a waiter, I know how staff kill time, but this is completely unacceptable. I’ve also been a manager, and this entire experience made me cringe and lose my appetite. McDonald’s has better service than this, and most of them are baked.
Look I get it, this place is bottom of the barrel quality. It’s cheap, right? Well no it’s not, it was still $ 40+ out of my pocket for a terrible time, poor quality, and to even be racially mocked. Had I known any of this (I trusted the Groupon reviews, not the Unilocal ones… first mistake), maybe I wouldn’t have gone in; and if I didn’t have other business tonight I would have refused to pay entirely for this ABSOLUTE RIP OFF– but I didn’t feel like arguing with absent management and/​or police tonight.
As for the food: The hot pot was standard fare, the meat was fresh and acceptable, and everything else was obviously just thawed out hours before. The Sushi, the SIX OF TWENTY FOUR PIECES ORDERED THAT ACTUALLY ARRIVED, was supermarket quality, and I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.
Again, to clarify, it was not busy in there, nor did we order anything complicated, and we could clearly see the kitchen staff just goofing around and not actually doing anything. Korean guests received faster service than everyone else, and even then, I could see they were getting screwed over too. I couldn’t believe the comatose manner with which the server didn’t care that we were still waiting for our order.
Bottom line: a $ 32 all inclusive sushi and hot pot all you can eat with drinks was a complete let down that over charged us and couldn’t even deliver water (great drink selection there guys) properly, let alone half of the ordered items.

I had a Lunch All you Can Eat here today.
#Service: ¹⁄₁₀
#Taste: ¹⁄₁₀
#Order Accuracy: ⁵⁄₁₀
For example, you order this but you get that,
you order that and you get this!!! you order 4 but you only get 1. sometimes thet give you food you did not even ordered.
Really slow and worst experience I have ecer had in a restaurant.
For those who are used to restaurants like earls, moxies, Joey, or other fancy restaurants, don’t expect any service like that.
P. S. I am an individual who always gives 10~20% tip at a restaurant but I just couldn’t tip these servers.

Order this, we are out. Order that, we are also out.
It was 6ish when we walked into the restaurant with a group buy coupon that offered all you can eat hotpot for 15.99 rather than their inflated original price of 27.99. My mistake for not looking it thoroughly, it did not cover the soup base which was 9.99.
Sushi was disgusting as it was rock hard.
I do not see this restaurant lasting for more than a year. Stay clear of this restaurant. It is not worth your time and money when you see the restaurant almost empty during dinner time.

#148
Let’s start off by saying that Fly W.‘s «not recommended» review is legit. How do I know? Who do you think I stay with when I visit Vancouver? How do you think I found this place?
I could swear this is the old location of the old Robson Sushi which was also an all-​you-​can-​eat (ayce) restaurant.
Assuming I am right, apparently, the interior had been updated even since my first visit (I have been 3 times including 2 times in 3 days which is what this review will cover (Friday, 30 October and Saturday, 31 October).
I have yet to try the Korean BBQ but based on the smells coming from the table across the aisle, that would be a good pick. I understand this ayce option has been added recently. Be advised that the soup base is extra for this ($ 9.99) and this soup base charge applies to the non-​ayce version of hot pot (that seemed a little pricey to me but then I don’t eat hot pot that much so that could be the norm).
There are 4 sections of the ayce menu I was given including A, B, C, D. If memory serves, the prices for the ABCD combo are $ 24.99 and $ 19.99 for the AD combo. If you want short ribs and some other cooked foods, you have to get the former (ABCD) as the latter (AD) is ayce sashimi/​sushi (and you still get teriyakis, motoyakis, and tempuras).
Bonny A. mentioned there is a sashimi limit on first order. I did not experience that and that may have changed since she reviewed the few days before I visited (after reading other reviews, many policies have changed as it appears the owners are trying to find a happy medium that is profitable and pleases customers; change can be good). She is right when she says the prices are excellent (I’d say reasonable as well) and high quality (for sure). The hand rolls are good as well (though I like my spicy tuna to be spicier :)). I also like the seaweed salad (I had 5 servings myself) while the miso soup is a little salty (but I did have 2 bowls). The shrimp and veggie tempura that I had was lightly breaded and not very greasy (a good thing for me). The chicken in the chicken teriyaki was very moist and again, the outside lightly breaded (other places I have had this dish and the chicken almost tastes like cardboard and I know we need fibre but come on; not the case here… moist and delicious (SNL skit reference)).
Some specials you need to be aware of is that the $ 12.99 pitcher of beer (including a Pale Ale (I think Granville Island), Honey Lager (I think Granville Island), and Sapporo) is as low as $ 6.99 per pitcher if you get the ayce sushi and/​or ayce Hot Pot. It goes to $ 10.99 if you get the non-​ayce Hot Pot which I think is $ 10.99 as well (and probably if you just get a la carte sushi but since I never get that in these type of situations, I cannot verify). Their pitcher does NOT have the cone in the middle which is supposedly for cooling (come on, not everyone is stupid enough to believe that) so you get good value for your pitcher!
I usually get water when I consume ayce and this was no exception. Unlike Bonny A.‘s experience, my water was fine (no ill effects at this time).
As Fly W., Bonny A, and several others have noted, the service does appear better when it’s less busy (this also enforces my observation that in Canada, the service usually fails unless the person knows you and/​or it’s not busy).
The (men’s) washroom was spotless on both days so Bonny A.‘s sketchy experience could have been a fluke.
Bonny A. is right when she says you could walk by and miss this place; I only know it changed ownership/​names because of my friend, Fly W. (his review is one the 41+ not recommended; I have contact Unilocal about this but nothing has been done as of this posting).
Things I would like to see include wild sockeye salmon, chinook salmon, or pacific salmon (when in season, of course).
I agree with much of what Fly W. and Bonny A. said as they are honest reviews based on my experiences thus far (my next trip will in December for sure).

My wife and I were walking home from her office nearby and wanted something different from the other Korean restaurants on Robson. As we had never been to Shi Nian before, we decided to give it a try.
It was a Tuesday night and the place was not yet busy and we were seated right away by a pleasant hostess. We told her we wanted the AYCE BBQ and were given the selection menu. After reading the instructions (yes, instructions) we made our selections. Our server (same person as the hostess) asked if that was all we were ordering, so I asked her to clarify what she meant. She said you’re allowed to order 3 rounds of any item, up to 20 pieces. What she was not able to convey was the portion size of each piece per round. So, if you want a Miso soup, you order 1. If you want a Chicken Katsu, you order one. But if you want to order BBQ, 1 piece equals 1 small piece. If you want to order enough for 2 people, you put 10. This made no sense. The portion sizes for each dish is almost random, especially for the BBQ.
For the BBQ items we orders Beef Shortrib, Lamb, and Bulgogi. We ordered 5 portions of the Beef Shortrib and received only 3 pieces. It took about 15 minutes for our order to come. The 5 portions of lamb came in an assortment with bones in it and was cut in ways that really made no sense (some were cubed, some were just strips of fat, some were long thins pieces). The 5 portions of Bulgogi was also cut inconsistently, and were NOT marinated. Bulgogi SHOULD BE marinated, that’s what makes it Bulgogi. I should state again that the portion sizes were all inconsistent, even though we ordered the same amount for each dish.
The BBQ quickly fills the place with smoke because the venting does not go through the overhead exhaust over each table, but instead goes through the restaurant’s ventilation system. So after 5 minutes, you end up wreaking of smoke.
While we were eating our 1^st round, we decided to select our 2^nd round choices. This is where it gets ridiculous. Our initial hostess/​server did not take our order, but another one did. She was wearing a wool hat on her head. That’s when we noticed that of the 3 servers (2 females, 1 male) they were all wearing their street clothes, not uniforms or even the same t-​shirts.
After 5 minutes, the male server gave us the 2 bowls of steamed rice we ordered. After waiting 15 more minutes and not having any of our other 2^nd round orders arrive, I had to flag down the male server and ask him where our order was? He came back with our selection sheet and told me that everything we ordered was delivered. I pointed out to him that our 2^nd server did not bother to compare our selection sheet with the receipt of the items that were sent to our table. If she had done that, she would have seen that we had ordered more BBQ items.
His weak excuse was «I didn’t take your order though» and that’s when I told him that the system should be foolproof because all you have to do is compare the selection sheet with the receipt of the items. If the 2 don’t match, then you’ve missed adding the items that were ordered. He then said he could order it for us then. We had already waited 15 minutes for our first order to come, and 15 minutes for our 2^nd order to NOT come, we would have to wait another 15 minutes again. I want you to consider though, that this is RAW MEAT we are waiting for. Why it takes so long is beyond me.
Not being happy with the service or the food, my wife and I decided to cut our losses and just leave, even though we were still hungry AND we paid for the AYCE menu and basically got only appetizers size portions for our 1^st round.
We will never go back to Shi Nian ever again, and we won’t even bother to give them a 2^nd chance.
Do yourself a favour and AVOID this place like the plague. Do Vancouver a favour and AVOID this place so they can close and be replaced by a half-​decent restaurant. PLEASE!

Really awesome restaurant in the middle of downtown. Service was super friendly and the waitress helped us cook our meals for BBQ. The food is really delicious, sushi looked and taste really good. For $ 20 this was a really good deal.

Hm. Tricky review. Been twice, and as long as I’m clear about what I want, I get exactly what I need. Green menu, sashimi all you can eat, thank you very much. No really, I want the green menu. Yes, I’m sure.
I find it depends on whose working as to what kind of service I get. Attentive, friendly, helpful? That’s one of gents with good English. Spacey, ignored, takes a long time, can’t order more? That’s one of the gals who barely speaks English. I had to point to get the green menu from her, and she had to check with three staff members, I can only assume to make sure we were allowed.
The sashimi, which is all I can eat here really, was excellent, although the salmon was much better the second time I went. Seriously, unlimited sashimi, except for the first round, with a max of 20 per item. I think the second time I went here, we got so much, we only had one round! It was amazing, and I wish I’d taken a picture. A huge mound of sashimi arrived on a platter… Yum.
Negatives: bathroom is a bit sketchy. Service is hit or miss. Can easily walk by and miss this place. Water is, um, yuck. I brought my own.
Positives: unlimited sashimi, excellent prices, lots of room, high quality. I give it a 3.5, it’s just not a 4 because of the service… But I’m giving them a break because they’re new. To be continued…

Good service and music. Live sports coverage. Dim lighting good for stuffing your face with sushi!

Worst period

EDITED REVIEW: Came back on the weekend. Not like what it was before. Everything was decent, but clearly they have lost some of their eagerness now that they’ve been opened for a few months. Fish wasn’t as fresh as I remembered…
— — — — — — –
This place is great! Way better than the old place before it. The fish is VERY fresh and not fatty. They change the BBQ grills for you in the middle of your meal and the service is very polite. In this new world that is losing good AYCE places, I’m glad that this place opened up. Oh, and it’s a good $ 2 cheaper than the rest of the places for dinner. And that’s the deluxe menu. You can go for the light menu (either BBQ or sashimi) if you’d rather just pay $ 19.99.

Decent price for the barbecue buffet; just don’t get any of the sushi rolls, they’re shitty.
Pleasant staff.

So we were walking to stanley park and just needed a place to eat. Shi nian looked clean and inviting so we went in. Big mistake. I can honestly say I have never eaten at a worse restaurant and never had worse service from our waitress Hui. The entire time they acted as if it was our privilege to dine at their extremely empty «soft opening» restaurant. There’s a 13 dollar all you can eat lunch special– dont bother. The service is so slow you won’t even get your moneys worth.
The waitress took the alacarte menu as soon as we sat down without asking if we were getting the AYCE special, the first red flag that we were getting ripped off. We had to go get one ourselves and when we told the waitress we were ordering alacarte she seemed very annoyed with us and would not return to take our order. 20 minutes later we get the waters we asked for when we sat down. They are so cheap that when we asked for straws they had the nerve to ask «how many do you need?» for a table of 3. It’s frickin straws.
From this point on our waitress was very rude with us, all but throwing down our plates when they arrived. On top of that, i ordered a few BBQ items for the little grill in the middle of our table. She came over 10 minutes after we ordered and told me in a condescending tone that i had mistakenly ordered off the BBQ menu and so she left that off our order. No «what would you like instead» or anything, just that she didn’t include that in our order because i guess she assumed i was a dumb tourist. I knew I was ordering off the bbq menu, which I told her, but then just changed to a rice bowl so i could have some damn food. I suspect she left off my whole part of the order because they didn’t want to turn on the grill!
And here’s the kicker. When we finally got the check, we found that she had added a 15% gratuity for herself to it! On a table of three! We asked the friendly table next to us that was leaving and they had no such service charge, likely because they weren’t white tourists. When we asked her about it she pretended like she didn’t understand us, until we pointed out their sign saying they would apply a service charge to tables of more than six and we were only three. We didn’t even get AYCE which would have been a lot of dishes, we got three rice bowls and a few appetizers! She said something angrily in chinese before fixing our receipt. Honestly i don’t even trust this place with my credit card info. I usually have a policy to never tip below 15% but this unpleasant woman got a single dollar bill for her horrible service and attempt to rip us off.

und wieder einmal die Strafe, das wir die Bewertungen nicht vorher gelesen haben, ich schiebe es mal auf das nicht vorhandene W-​Lan!
Es gibt einmal Sushi all you can eat für 19,99 $ oder inkl. BBQ für 24,99 $ welches man sich direkt am Tisch selbst zubereiten kann. Die Tische haben integrierte Grills.
Für Getränke galt Refill, das Personal war leider so unaufmerksam, das es nicht zu einem einzigen Refill kam. Das «vegetarische» Sushi war o.k. bei dem Anblick des Grills verging mir jedenfalls der Appetit, überall waren noch Fettrückstände zu sehen, als wäre man zu faul gewesen ihn richtig zu putzen.
Der Mangopudding war so widerlich, das wir ihn direkt stehen lassen mussten!
Am Schluss wurden wir sogar regelrecht herausgekehrt aus dem Laden, obwohl an anderen Tischen noch fleißig gegrillt wurde, nicht gerade die feine Art. Meine Antwort darauf war «Null Trinkgeld» für einen Nicht vorhandenen Service!

Went here for lunch with my family. Worst sushi experience of my life. Even though the restaurant was half empty, it took 10 minutes to be seated. The staff just ran around and it was unnecessarily difficult to give our orders and my mom eventually had to walk up and give it to the front desk herself. They then proceeded to bring us the wrong order twice and took another 10mins or so give us what we ordered in the first place. We were there for an hour or so and our second nigiri order never came, our other orders were only half completed. We essentially gave up, paid and left. So service: ¹⁄₅
Once our food did arrive, there wasn’t a single dish that was even satisfactory. Any sashimi is extra ($½pieces). Menu is EXTREMELY limited. The miso soup tasted like water, the gomae was dry and tasteless. Clearly not fresh. The chicken katsu looked like it had been eaten and spat back out, and was tasteless. I hesitate to even call the rolls «rolls» — they were terribly presented and the fish was mushy. See pictures. I guess the nigiri were the only acceptable food, but I still could easily find something better from the local grocery store’s prepackaged sushi. However, they are limited to 6 pieces of nigiri per person. I have never in my life been to an all you can eat that has placed a limit on nigiri. I could still taste the uncooked batter on the tempura and tofu. Food: 0.2÷5
Ambiance: the actual décor of the restaurant is quite nice. It is clean and newly renovated. They seem to have a soundtrack of 6 songs on constant replay. I personally was not that bothered by it, but I can see how it would be kind of annoying after a while. ³⁄₅
I managed to type this review in the time I was waiting between my order being taken and anything actually showing up at my table.
Never again.

Service was horrible. When I asked for wasabi, waitress told me that she was too busy. Waiter told table next to us to hold off on ordering because they were too busy. We tried their all you can eat. The food was horrible. I don’t know how they stay in business.

Horrible service and mediocre food. The servers didnt even take our slip or offer us drinks for the first 30 minutes, but kept bringing other peoples food to our table (this happened 4 times and when we tried to let them know, one server put her hand up at us to ignore us). By the time we got our food, many items were incorrect and some never came. Its not even worth the $ 12 AYCE because you won’t get to eat much unless youre prepared to spend the whole day there. Also I’m not sure what the excerpt from their menu is trying to say, but it pretty much warns you of the terrible service to come.

This place is new and pretty understaffed. Expect to wait at least 30 minutes for anything you order. $ 20 for all you can eat, with unlimited time and food is ok, but add to that $ 9.00 pitchers and it is hard not to give at least 2 stars. Some of the food is pretty so-​so, but a lot of it is way too salty.
On the other hand, if you order enough up front for what you want altogether and know what items are actually not too bad, you can make out with a pretty decent meal and drinks for a pretty good price.
I’ll give three stars, but I would have to have a pretty substantial reason to actually ever come back.