Okami Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Update with Okami response and further details from us

Extremely disappointed, rude staff and misleading "All You Can Eat" policy

We’ve been regular customers at Okami West End for a while and generally enjoyed the food and atmosphere, even overlooking the occasional missing dish or delay. However, our most recent visit was deeply disappointing and frankly upsetting.

A staff (guy) member who has apparently been there for a few months was incredibly rude and dismissive, ruining what was meant to be a nice night out for two families with kids. The level of disrespect was completely uncalled for and left a sour taste in what used to be one of our go to places. To make matters worse, we were told that the "all you can eat" offering comes with limits, which is not made clear on their website or in-store. When we asked to see where this was written, there was nothing to show us. This kind of misleading practice is unacceptable. Sadly, this was our last visit to Okami West End. I’d strongly advise others to think twice before dining here, especially if you're coming with family or expecting a genuine all you can eat experience.

Okami Japanese Restaurant (owner) Hi Omid, Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We’re truly sorry to hear about your disappointing experience at our West End location. We take your concerns very seriously and will be addressing them with our West End management team as we continue to improve our customer service and overall experience. To help us investigate this matter further, could you please share your booking details and the best contact number with us at support@okamirestaurant.com.au? We would also appreciate it if you could provide more information about what happened during your visit, especially regarding your understanding of the limits on our “All You Can Eat” offering. We appreciate your past support and sincerely regret that this visit did not meet your expectations. Best regards, Okami Japanese Restaurant

Hi Okami team, Thanks for replying. Unfortunately an apology can’t give us back the money we spent or the family night you ruined. Our kids were looking forward to a relaxed “all-you-can-eat” dinner, and instead we were told we’d reached some undisclosed limit after just 2 ice-creams for the table. As someone who manages staff myself, I would have shown that so-called “manager” the door on the spot: his attitude and disrespect were unacceptable, and he flat-out contradicted your own advertising. If you promote an unlimited offering, you need to honour it, or make the limits crystal-clear before people book.

I’m happy to e-mail you the booking details and my phone number so you can investigate, but I’m posting this here as well so future diners know exactly what happened. West End needs to lift its game, and Okami as a brand should take...

I didn't realise Okami have been around for 10 years, though only recently entered the Brisbane market with 2 stores in West End and Springwood. We visited the West End store and didn't quite manage to cover every single one of the 41 item available but did make decent ground with 25. My top 5 favourites/recommendations are: teriyaki steak miso steak potato croquette eggplant salad cold soba (buckwheat) noodles

Fans of sashimi will also want to get the sushi & sashimi platter which includes salmon sashimi, or the sushi nigiri platter. I also didn’t include desserts in my top 5 but make sure to leave some room in your stomachs to finish your meal on a sweet note with a scoop or two of ice cream (3 flavours to choose from) paired with some green tea taiyaki.

Overall the quality of the food was pretty decent. I'm not expecting top-notch fare with this price point and format but most items met/exceeded those expectations.

Ordering is done at your table (flip over a sign to indicate you want some attention), and note that the food is designed for sharing so portions can differ depending on the size of your group. So if you want more or less of an item do let the staff know so you can be served appropriately. You can always start smaller to sample items and order more of the ones you find to your liking.

Service was fairly attentive and we had a good flow of food to our table so were never left with nothing to eat for long.

I would recommend bookings as the place was pretty busy on a Wednesday night. It can also get pretty loud inside, so I suggest you bring your squad and get hyped up to contribute to the lively...

UPDATE: Was told to send contact information to the team so they can follow up with the experience and issues at the meal, it’s been around 2 months and have not heard back.

Food was good, service needs attention!

We had a booking for a group of 10 and were seated promptly. Once seated we used their “service” system to indicate we were ready to order but no staff took notice of the service sign to take our order. Funnily enough they took the orders of 3 other tables who had arrived later than we did and we seated in the same area, the staff almost seemed like they went out of their way to avoid us.

When we finally ordered the food came out quite slowly, it took about 1 hour before all the items we ordered from our first round of orders to arrive. Once all our food did arrive we were told it was time for our last order and we were felt pressured to make our last choices quickly. For an “all you can eat” restaurant we were only able to make two orders total.

The venue is so cramped that staff were handing us food over our heads with many near misses and drops. When the staff cleared up some of the plates, an incident occurred where a plate was dropped and sauce was spilled over one of our groups clothing. No assistance was offered to cleanup, the mess was just left there both on the table and the floor.

The food was good and would definitely be worth it if not the terrible service and rushed environment.

Unless they can greatly improve on the dining environment and service I would...