Okami Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

2 stars. We go regularly to Okami Mornington or Bundoora when visiting family and never have had a bad experience with either location, however we left Chelsea last night very disappointed and will not go back.

We did not have an allocated waiter.

We had to wave waiters down to get drinks, order food etc.

The food took longer then any other location to come out.

When they first took our order, asked for 2 servings of plates as there was a group of us, staff suggested a larger portion, we agreed. Food came and ended up to be a smaller portion and same size I’d get if it was just me and my husband at another location. Lack of service and food to cater table - not ideal.

After 60mins a waiter came out to tell us we had to order final meals including desserts as our table finished in 30mins. I have NEVER had any other location say or do this nor had any location rush us out like this.

This put the pressure on, resulting in us all trying to figure out what we wanted as we hadn’t had much to eat, due to the lack of service at our table. In fact, we only had one round of meals come out due to lack of service.

We were told to order desserts and that, they would come out after we ate before our 90mins (again reminded of time). As we were eating the food that literally just came out, two desserts came out, were put on our table and waiter walked off, then ice creams came out - I said “no, someone said after we ate, please take them back”, mind you the table had visual meals on it. He was the rudest man, no acknowledgement of this, no apology and instead said “F*” under his breath - two of us clearly heard it.

We ate quickly, then with ten mins till the big 90 I waved a waiter down asking for the desserts we ordered. They came out wrong, we stopped caring at this stage, as the same man who cursed placed them down I thanked him to which he completely ignored me and showed no customer service or basic manners to our table.

Not a good experience, ruined the vibe, would not recommend or go back to this Okami, highly recommend Mornington, Frankston or Bundoora.

2 stars goes to the food, as always, great however other...

My husband and I had dinner at Okami Chelsea recently on Tuesday 28 Feb 2023. Food was generally good except for the Agedashi Tofu. It was cold, gluey and slimy on the outside and a bit hard n over cooked inside. The tofu have been soaked in the gravey for a while😖. We enjoyed it at Okami Hampton as it came hot n crispy outside n the inside is silky n melt in the mouth. Spicy Ika was tasteless n not spicy at all. Just something bland n chewy like eating plastic sticks. Prefer the old version. Grilled chicken wing was a sad story - menu shows 4 wings but we got two. It was not grilled, looks pale, not golden brown... More like soy steam chicken wing. V disappointed. I will never order these dishes ever again!!

It took a while for our first order to arrive though we were the 2nd to be seated n orders were taken immediately. Customers who were seated after us got their food first, we were kept waiting. 2nd round order was quite fast. 3rd round order was snail paced slow but it did arrived after 15/20 minutes wait. Then we kept getting food we didn't order n have to send it to the person who ordered... two tables away. 4th round, the staff keep ignoring us when we tried to order. Why? Cos the staff don't clear our plates after 3rd order arrived, a signal to tell staff to slow down n ignore our table. We also noticed plates are not cleared after 3rd order as well for our neighbouring tables. It's AYCE but service is slow after 2nd round. After I paid my bill, I noticed 3 wrong orders were registered in our bill = we "hit our limit" n get ignored. There were another 5 plates of wrong orders we sent away, the staff must have amended the table number else we won't even get our 3rd orders. It was fine till 3rd round order became stressful...Not happy - not...

This visit relates to the opening of the most recent location, in Chelsea Heights. However, I have visited their original location in Hampton (with the family) and Cranbourne (with friends). I can easily say that I feel the standard of food and quality of service is of the highest standard across these three venues.

Okami run a tight ship and are extremely fast paced in their sittings. Bookings are a must and you need to obey sitting times. Our recommendation is the earlier sitting and to arrive at opening time. It becomes extremely busy quickly. If you have any preferences for location of the venue to be seated (ie accommodate a pram or booth seats), you best make that request when booking.

I visited Chelsea Heights a couple weeks after opening and it was already a hot spot with the locals. We were seated and provided plastic tableware for the kids. We were given recommendations of favourite dishes that the kids would like (as we specified we would order a couple things first for them to try).

We ordered a few dishes at a time and would reorder after finishing each dish. We don’t like to over order and we wanted to gauge what the kids would eat. Okami portion the serves based on the table size; so if you have a bigger table; you can ask them to portion down a dish if the whole table isn’t interested.

Food was extremely prompt, but as it got closer to full house; it did slow down. We ordered about 8 dishes and all dishes were high quality and fresh. We noticed that they were well staffed to handle the large volume of orders and very friendly.

Overall, a very positive experience for us and we look forward to...