Okami Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

What an absolute disappointment, and be warned - THEY DO NOT ACCEPT THE DINE NSW COVID VOUCHERS, plus will happily charge 1.5% credit card surcharge.

Having noticed this new restaurant recently open and seemingly quite popular, I suspect based on tonight's experience it will struggle to survive amongst the many wonderful long-standing dining options in our local area - restaurants and eateries run by hard working decent people, who appreciate the support and will also graciously accept the Dine NSW Vouchers.

We ordered the "buffet" dinner option, which cost $141.29 for 4, after the 1.5% credit card surcharge.

Food is ordered off the menu, and it appears at varying stages throughout the sitting. Portions are small, which is good in that you get to try a wide variety of dishes ... but maybe not so good after-all.

The staff are friendly and obviously trying to keep the customers happy, however it's what they're serving that lets the experience down.

We tried the following:-

2 salads - seaweed, mushroom. Both were really tasty, however I suspect they were not made in-house. The seaweed salad is the standard imported frozen product widely available.

Tempura - oily, hard, seemed like it had been twice fried. Nothing like a traditional light tempura batter.

Takoyaki - tasted ok, but seemed microwaved from frozen product, shrivelling up as it cooled.

Teriyaki chicken - if there was such a thing as canned chicken chunks, this would have been it. Skinless and devoid of any character. The cheap bottled sauce further letting it down.

Teriyaki beef - meat texture was not like beef. It had more of a strange bite, somewhere between chicken and firm fish. I would liken it to crocodile, however it seemed more like a manufactured product.

Agedashi tofu - actually tasted really good, even came with bonito flakes and had a nice dressing.

Potato croquette - frozen product, not unlike what you could buy from the local supermarket. Tasted ok, just not what you'd reasonably expect from a restaurant.

Tonkatsu - seemed twice fried. Overly oily and dry inside.

Sushi - dry, not fresh. Have eaten better sushi from the supermarket.

Sashimi - as per the sushi, but the chunk of salmon was a first - it's typically thinly sliced.

Squid - if there was fake squid, this would have been a great example. Un-natural texture, and covered in too much pepper, which clashed with the same sickeningly sweet sauce as used with the other dishes.

Karaage - served cold, over fried, oily, just the taste of batter with a dry, shrivelled piece of chicken hiding inside.

Desserts - green tea ice cream was ok, however black sesame ice cream had obviously part melted and been refrozen, as evidenced from the frozen "puddle" under and around the main ice cream ball. Flavour was non-descript.

The taiyaki deserves special mention - a deep fried concoction which would have made news headlines in Japan for all the wrong reasons. Traditionally this is made in a griddle, similar to a waffle. Tonight's version was rich and sickly, over powered by the taste of oil, with a strange green sweet filling - not red bean, nor taro, what exactly was it meant to be???

The owner of this restaurant should be ashamed of the food being served. I am puzzled by the seemingly positive reviews posted, but would hazard a guess such reviews were posted by diners having never eaten authentic Japanese cuisine, OR perhaps we just went there on a really bad night.

As for not accepting the COVID NSW VOUCHERS, shame on you!!! The fact we decided to support your business tonight with our hard-earned money which could otherwise have been spent more deservingly absolutely justifies the poor...

Okami appears to operate on two seatings a night - one at 5:00pm, and at 7:45pm.

Wife and I booked the 7:45pm seating for Sat 5 June 2021 - the night was very chilly, and we arrived at 7:30 to find a few people waiting inside, with a crowd growing outside while the staff frantically ran around cleaning and setting up tables. We noticed a few other guests had been seated with menus, but both they, and the growing crowd behind us were being ignored until we all were finally seated at around 7:50pm.

The staff had made a mistake with a large booking of 27 people, splitting them up into two tables, with us seated a little in between them - which resulted in us being crowded by the larger group (this was not their fault, as they wanted to simply greet their friends and family, and had to push past us).

I had to pop out of my seat and explain to one of the staff that they could move us, and extend the table for the larger group, resulting in two happier tables.

They instead moved us to another empty table, which was unfortunately directly in the way of the propped open door - which meant we enjoyed the freezing wind blowing in from outside, and which would have cooled out food assumed we managed to order any.

So what happens when you seat 80+ hungry people (it was 8pm by this point) all at once at an all you can eat restaurant? Obviously the hungry patrons all attempt to order at once. It was at this point, we noticed the dysfunctional system Okami operates on being further exacerbated - there appeared to be two 'teams' of staff, three poor people who were methodically taking orders starting from the kitchen and working their way out - and some other staff who explicitly refused to take orders, and instead carried food out from the kitchens.

When you have 30+ tables all attempting to order at once, I assume the kitchen would then be flooded with orders, which would lead to the scenario in the other reviews of cold food, and incorrect orders.

Why Okami would do this is a mystery - why have only some staff take orders (not enough) and only some staff take out food, when the entire team should do both? Why seat everyone at once knowing that this leads to a glut of orders (its an all you can eat, so I assume some people would order a bunch of different items to try, and there were many large tables). Either way, their system is set up to fail and I feel sorry for the poor front of house team since they will be the ones that cop the abuse and the stress.

We couldn't tell you about the food, as we saw another family with three hungry kids leave, then noticed that the family sitting in the corner table (which had been there before we arrived - so probably at the table for 40+ mins) hadn't been served so we decided to bail.

Either way, only take your friends/family there if you no longer wish to see them, and enjoy being...

Have been anticipating visiting this restaurant ever since I saw their advertising on a bus a few months back. The location is easy to find, easy to park (as it is in a shopping centre). I booked the opening seating time of 5.30pm as I took along my 8 year old son so an early dinner was in order, but I also feel like the food was quick to start arriving after ordering. It was only as the restaurant filled up that the speed of the food’s arrival relative to how long ago we’d ordered, slowed a little - but by then we had already eaten enough to mean a little break was very welcome. The food was good for an all you can eat venue - meaning that it wasn’t the best version of each dish I have ever eaten, but I wouldn’t expect that here. My favourite dish was the Spicy Ika and the sushi platters ! My son was able to try many different dishes and even though he is usually not very adventurous he found a lot of items he enjoyed including the grilled chicken wings and of course the icecream. The inside of the restaurant looks pleasant and I felt there was plenty of space between tables which is great, however I would note that it is quite loud inside (due to the sound reverberating against the flooring and walls) so it’s more about the eating than the dinner conversation. The service was very patient, understanding and with plenty of helpful communication about what to expect when ordering and a call for last food orders. I also appreciated that they were happy to accomodate requests like keeping sauces on the side. I also found it quite easy to find a server to order from whenever we were ready to add something new to our table. Overall, I would recommend to anyone who likes a good all you can eat or would like to try many...