Hanamizuki Japanese Restaurant

We had the loveliest waitress! Saturday 11/10/25. The food was great. Very wholesome, homemade tasting. The entrees arent pictured, but the karaage is BOMB. All of the portions were very generous. Pictured is unagi don, chilli teriyaki chicken, beef fillet with prawns, and chicken katsu don. And the cute birthday cake! There was a longer wait than expected between courses (it was busy though) which was actually really nice because we had time for conversation without feeling like we were being rushed out.

- Narwhalio -

We came here on Friday evening and had a lovely evening. We started off with drinks, tempura asparagus and had karaage donburi bowls as mains. Our meals were well cooked and tasty. Everything came out promptly and our waitress was nice. Will be back again for sure

- Naomi Halford -

I adore most Japanese food, so I was excited to have dinner here, based on what I saw on the menu. My partner and I ordered quite the variety of dishes, the majority of which were excellent. We began with the hanetsuki gyoza. I am not exaggerating when I say that this was the best gyoza I've had in Palmerston North. The base was crispy, and the pork and chives filling was juicy and nicely seasoned. This was followed by the salmon and tuna sashimi. Both fish were fresh and flavourful. They were also quite large slices, which is a nice change from the slivers other restaurants tend to give. Our choice of sushi was their original "Rock ‘N’ Roll", which sounded the most unique. It came out looking a bit of a mess, but the flavour combination more than made up for this. We were especially impressed by the prawn tempura inside the roll, which was crunchy and delicious, despite being surrounded by moister ingredients. However, I personally thought that the bitterness of the snow pea shoots detracted from overall experience a bit. Next was their agedashi tofu. This is one of our favorite dishes, so we were especially looking forward to it. Thankfully, what we got was absolutely delicious, perhaps even the best. The flavour of the tofu stood out, even in the midst of the salty and umami dadhi sauce, and the crisp exterior held up incredibly well. Unfortunately, once the pork ramen soup arrived, our experience was soured. From the very first sniff, something was very wrong. It literally smelled like I was walking down an aisle of Chinese dried herbs. While confusing, I did not want to judge it yet, so I tried the broth. It tasted just as strange, lacking any presence of the rich pork flavour the description promised. It felt like random sachets from old instant noodles had been thrown together to create this mystery liquid. At least the pork itself was decent. Our final course was the tempura udon. We were so glad to see that this was bounds ahead of the ramen. The tempura prawn, pumpkin, and kumara were excellent. However, the noodles themselves were just average. Strangely, some tempura broccoli was also included. There's nothing wrong with that in theory, but its bitterness clashed with the sweeter flavours of everything else in an unpleasant way in this scenario. The service was good, with attentive floor staff regularly checking on tables. They offered to refill our teapot as soon as they noticed it was empty, and dishes were cleared away promptly. The one issue was that there was seemingly only one chef, which led to long wait times. Maybe we were unlucky on the Tuesday night we came, but be prepared to have some patience. Overall, I definitely recommend Hanamizuki if you're a fan of Japanese cuisine. It combines traditional flavours with a modern twist at times. We wholeheartedly recommend their sashimi, sushi, gyoza, tofu, and tempura. Try the ramen if you are the morbidly curious type.

- Xionication -