Okami Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Yesterday evening, at 7:45pm, I had made a dinner reservation. Upon arrival, I noticed a large crowd of people waiting outside. Due to the cold weather, my partner and I decided to go inside instead of waiting outside. We were looking forward to our first visit to Okami, having heard numerous positive reviews. Assuming that the people outside were walk-in customers, we proceeded inside, unaware that they too had reservations.

To our disappointment, despite being right at the front, we were completely ignored by the manager named Ally. She continued to seat other customers while disregarding our presence. This made us feel incredibly uncomfortable and created a negative first impression of Okami. Eventually, one of her staff members noticed our awkward situation and promptly arranged a table for two.

After a few minutes, we were ready to place our order. Unfortunately, no staff members approached us. We flagged down a passing employee and requested to order, but they couldn't assist us and assured that they would inform their colleagues. However, even after five minutes, we received no attention. Another staff member walked by but was unable to take our order, promising to relay our readiness to the others. Surprisingly, when the manager passed by us, she opted to serve a neighboring table instead of addressing our needs. I patiently waited for her to finish and attempted to get her attention by raising my hand and calling out to her multiple times. Regrettably, she completely ignored us.

Finally, after five more minutes, the manager approached us and asked if we were ready to order. My partner expressed her frustration, stating that she had been ready for a long time and had tried to get the attention of both the staff members and the manager herself to no avail. Disregarding her concerns, the manager simply proceeded to take our order. The whole experience, with the manager's unprofessional behavior and the numerous difficulties we encountered, left us feeling extremely uncomfortable. It's disheartening to receive such poor customer service, especially from a manager. We are typically fair and generous in our reviews, but this time, we were utterly shocked and appalled by the level of service we received.

To make matters worse, we decided to voice our complaints to one of the staff members, who encouraged us to escalate the issue to the general manager, indicating that the manager we dealt with was not competent. Based on our personal experience, I would strongly advise against visiting this establishment. The staff, particularly the manager Ally, created an unwelcoming environment that could have easily been avoided with good customer service. As nice individuals who simply wanted to enjoy a meal when we were hungry, we were sorely disappointed. Considering the circumstances, I will not be returning to this place, and I caution anyone reading this to proceed at their own risk. This may have been an isolated incident, but it undoubtedly stands as the worst restaurant experience I have ever...

Japanese all you can eat. About $40 per person for all kinds of Japanese cuisine. Drinks paid separately of course. My first time here on a Sunday evening, 5 pm session. Arrived at 4:54 pm, opened the front door to be greeted with “Are you all together”? (Pointing at a party they had in the far end) I said “no, we have a booking for 5pm”. She replied “we are not open yet, wait outside”. No please, no thank you. We then went back outside to wait out the additional 6 minutes until opening, we had a pram with a 14 week old baby it was also raining. Never mind, we thought - let’s just give it a go first time coming and all. Finally at 5pm the doors opened, we were seated on the same side as the big party of at least 40 + people. Very loud, very busy with our pram being smack bang in the walk way for both servers and guests at that party. Annoyed, I asked one server if possible was there a seat on the actual restaurant side for 2 people and a pram considering we did make a booking, she replied with “no very busy”. Again, fair enough we thought let’s make the most of it. Ordered our drinks which came very quickly, ordered a few dishes too. Waited a good while for them to arrive one by one, I’m assuming due to the large party they were catering to but then as it is my first time I have nothing to compare it to. We realised quickly the service was slow therefor started ordering more things whilst waiting. Upon receiving the food there was no one to clear the table So we started stacking the plates on top of each other, it got ridiculous so I ended up stacking them in the middle table they keep the menus. At the end of the night one of the first items we ordered when arriving at 5pm was the octopus balls, we received them at 645pm and I believe only because we asked the server 2 times on its eta. It became frustrating as the servers started bringing the food and not telling us what we were receiving so we had to make a list on our phone of the item numbers (way too much effort). The best dish for us was the chicken karage and vanilla ice cream. For a Japanese restaurant the quality of the actual food was just alright. We won’t be returning, but if anyone wanted to experience this style of dining for $40...

Hi, we have eaten here many times and were very disappointed with what happened yesterday (the booking was at 5:30 pm for 3 people under reviewer name - Sunday 22nd October). We truly understand that the service staff were understaffed with only having 3 people, but we only had a simple request that could not be fulfilled because the manager (I assume - the lady dressed in black) had said something that was not right at all. Half of the restaurant was "closed off" due to only 3 of them being staffed on so we were seated right next to the toilet. We politely requested if we could be moved somewhere else because we could smell the toilet; even with their efforts of using spray and soap, it was the fact that we could smell the toilet in itself was off putting. The lady in black had told us they could not move us because the other half was closed and that they only had 3 people staffed on. To me, this does not make sense, because if the other half was closed, it doesn't change the number of guests in the restaurant because if that other half was not booked, they could have just moved us to a free table without changing the number of guests. We then politely asked again about 10 minutes after and they still could not fufill that. My mum was visibly gagging at the smell of the toilet (even with toilet soap and spray that was used already) while she was trying to eat. Come around 6-6:30pm, the lady in black started allowing walk-ins to sit in the area that was "closed off" - to me, that is very unprofessional and different to what she had said to us. She told us it was "closed off" but she started to allow walk-ins to sit there which really did not sit right with my Mum because she was gagging at the smell. It was pretty sad that they could not just move three people to the other end of the room. She should have not said that it was closed off when in fact, it started filling up later on with walk-ins. Very, very dissappointed as it was hard, especially for my Mum to enjoy the food. We just did not want to keep asking because we do understand they were understaffed. Good...