I heard about great things about this restaurant for food and service recently. My friends are so crazy about this restaurant ever since they re-opened after closing for few months due to some renovation issues. I decided to dine in today for lunch which is Saturday. I expected to be busy since it was the busiest time for lunch. It was not that busy luckily but they didn't have a cleaned table when I got there. I could tell It was busy before I got there. One of the servers told me to wait to clean up the table which was totally understandable. While I was waiting I went over to the sushi bar to see how fresh their fish is, hoping to talk to the sushimen like other sushi restaurants. Most of restaurants I have been to was like regular customers usually want to seat at the sushi bar to talk to the sushimen. But here seems like sushimen don't even have any service minds when customer is at the sushi bar. If they can't speak english, they can still try to communicate with customers rather than just ignoring them. I have seen many wonderful sushimen trying to make customers happy with broken english. Pretty much all I heard was a simple 'hello' from one of guys and no one even bother to look at me for a while rather they were talking to each other only. I guess their service is only depending on the servers' efforts and the taste of the food. It was too big and busy for only 2-3 servers but they did their best to be attentive. And the food was great. Of course I will still come back but not seating at the sushi bar for sure.

This place has just reopened, and although it's surrounded by other options for Japanese cuisine, there isn't a particularly GOOD sushi option nearby. Basically, the area is ripe for the picking, and Tengoku could easily capitalize on this.

Servicewise, the place stands head and shoulders above the local competition, and ranks high among some of the better sushi places downtown. You're greeting very well, receive a fond farewell and are offered tea while waiting for takeout. They really seem genuine and this extends to everyone working there who comes in contact with you, not just the servers. I've been twice, and the second time I stuck around to take in the very clean and attractive dining area, roomy but still intimate. The chef works in a station open to the rest of the restaurant, which is fairly creatively set up.

Value is what you'd expect. You're paying about 10-12 for a couple rolls, with the cheap ones like California going for about 4 dollars.

The real problem is the food. The sushi here is pretty average, despite coming in many different types and flavours. What point is having a volcano roll if it isn't tasty? The deep frying isn't executed particularly well either. Even basic rolls aren't as good as they could be, and this alone is holding back what would become the best sushi joint in the Guildford area.

I came here on Mother's day after reading a couple of reviews. After reading a blog which certainly gives Sushi Tengoku more credit for their food and service, I decide to give it a try. I can say that I am really satisfied with this visit and I will certainly return!

I phoned in advance and I was informed that Sundays + mother's day will be busy so I made a reservation. We came in at 11:30 which is just when they open. That makes a difference in the service because food was delivered quickly and parking was easy too. I believe we were served by the owner, or at least the more experienced manager. When we were ordering, she introduced the specials and served us tea and miso soup right away. We asked for a pot of tea on our table because we sat at the very inner corner and usually they could miss serving the customers because it's a fairly big restaurant. I think the problem is the layout of the interior, not really the service (for the people who had unpleasant experience).

So we ordered Seafood dinner combo, terikyaki bento, sashimi bento and a tuna&salmon tempura roll. The value is great if you ordered the right things ;) Seafood has a lot of items and can certainly feed more than 2. Bento was my favorite, although the teriyaki and rice portion is too little. The tempura roll was not as good as I thought because the tempura was small and they didn't use any special sauce. I want to try their special rolls next time. As the seafood dinner comes with dessert, we were supposed to get 1 portion of dessert. But the owner was very kind and she served everyone ice cream (mango or green tea)!!

The owner(?) was very kind and she chat with me a bit. She was very open to suggestions and asked how the food was, and when I mentioned that I read the reviews before I came, she even wanted to get the address of the website (although it was a chinese food blog). When we were paying, they put chocolate mint instead of cheap mint candies. There was so much food for 5 people and it came to about $10 each.

In summary, I would recommend this restaurant because the service was really good and food has value. Although there wasn't really one thing that's amazing well done, it's good food for friend/family gatherings and for people who like japanese food. The menu has a very varied selection. You just have to do your homework before you come...like making a reservation and don't come here when it's the busiest! We noticed the parking lot was all full around 1pm. Anyway, Sushi Tengoku deserves more credit and it has my recommendation.

We had pretty much had the same experience as the other reviewer MamaMia2010. Terrible service and mediocre food, but we were also missing several items that we ordered. We ordered the Tengoku combination meal for two. Out of that we were missing the takoyaki, tempura and dessert. We even flagged down the waitress half way through our meal and inquired about the takoyaki and were told, "It should be coming" which of course it never did. Our meal started out with the house salad, which was presented to us on ONE large plate. We had to request additional small, separate plates which finally came to us after we had finished the salad. At this point we finally received the glasses of water we had asked for when we had first placed our order.

The most infuriating thing was that we were having the worst meal ever, due in part to a lack of service. Several times I caught our waitress scanning her area looking for things to do, or worse yet I could see her hanging out chit chatting in the kitchen. We spent a lot of time in this restaurant waiting and praying. Waiting to place our order. Praying that our glass of water would come sometime soon or that our tea would be refilled. Waiting for plates to eat off of. Praying that takoyaki and tempura would arrive. Waiting for our main course. Praying that dessert or at least a bill would come so we could leave.

Finally, when neither dessert or a bill showed up to our table I took our grievances to the hostess stand. If this place stood a chance of getting me to return, the hostess would have apologized for the horrendous experience and comped us what little food we got. After all, a new restaurant lives and dies by return visits, word of mouth and not by people who won't return. Instead, at the hostess stand, I had to negotiate what we would and would not be paying for and hear petty excuses about how they had just opened a month ago and were still getting better!? Excuse me if you have the gall to open up a new restaurant and not have a clue how to run one before you open the doors! Besides, I don't want to hear excuses, I could care less, I just want to know what you're doing to fix it. They couldn't get that done. We wont be returning.