Barossa Japanese Fine Dining via Groupon

Japanese food overlooking a scenic green golf course. Sounds familiar? Yup, KizunaOne used to offer good Japanese food in Royal Perak Golf Club. Somehow, the place changed management (and chef too most likely) and it was named Barossa. It has been in business for quite some time but I was not keen to try it after hearing that it serves both Japanese and Thai food under 1 roof.

Until I got to purchase some Groupon vouchers for the Salmon set. This was my first purchase in Groupon. Well, Groupon has not been expanding their business to Ipoh until now. I thought, not bad... for RM20, I can have a pass to experience a new dining experience. Well, the experience was indeed new, very different from KizunaOne, albeit not a memorable one. The restaurant was so hot and stuffy because they must be on "cost efficient" mode to switch on 1 or 2 units of cassette air conditioning unit on the ceiling. The air was solely from those Tower Air Cooler only.

3 of us arrived first, while another 2 have were late. We brought our own coupon separately. Upon seating, the service captain confirmed with us our bookings and checked our vouchers. We passed her the vouchers and told her that 2 of our friends are on the way. Without asking further, she came back in less than 10 minutes to serve us our food! Heck, she didn't check with us whether do we want to have our food served first and made her own decision to "prepare" and "serve" it even though we informed her beforehand that WE STILL HAVE PEOPLE ON THE WAY! She insisted that the food should be served and not held back because it wont be nice if its cold already.

Heck, this is actually what you get. Look similar as advertised but the Salmon teriyaki is freaking cold! No wonder she insisted that we accept the food being served immediately upon preparing. I felt, it was REHEATING rather than preparing. The raw salmon sashimi DO NOT have the refreshing feel and I suspect that it was again prepared in advance. In fact, I don't feel that the salmon slices were fresh either. The Groupon vouchers were priced at RM20 for 1 set or RM36 for sets. You get a small slab of grilled teriyaki salmon, salmon sashimi, salmon nigiri sushi and salmon makis. Looks like a steal for RM20 but for the quality and service, I felt that you better go for the ones in Jusco supermarket. We had side orders of Potato Salad, Garlic Fried Rice and portion of Seasoned Octopus and Seasoned Jellyfish. All of them failed to deliver. Although it was only RM20, but I was utterly disappointed with the passion of serving food and my mood was spoilt by the service. I don't think this place deserve any revisit at all, not to mention any positive feedback to the people around me. Bah!