Okami Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Victoria

If you've been to any other Okami branches in Melbourne, you'll be disappointed with the kind of service you will get from the Bendigo branch.

This one need more staff, or better yet, some training from a more established Okami.

As soon as we arrived, I specifically reiterated to staff that I will be ordering 'ala carte only' as we don't have plans of staying longer and so I gave her our orders right away expecting everything will be served in one go just like what they do in other branches (or maybe just few minutes difference per food) but guess what, our orders were served one by one with a downtime of maybe 10-15 minutes per serving. Our second order of rice arrived after 30 minutes (or maybe even more) and after 2 follow ups. I went to the counter as hubby wanted to leave already so I asked if they can just place my ala carte order in takeaway box but it was refused as they don't allow takeaways apparently? So much to my dismay, I requested to just cancel the order but again, they declined. I told them not to worry about serving it, and I will just pay regardless as we still need to travel back to Melbourne. The guy at the register agreed but when he showed the amount that I'm supposed to pay, I found out that we've actually been charged with their 'all you can eat' rate, and not the ala carte that I initially requested on arrival that's why they won't allow me to do a 'take away'. Now, that explains the small servings per plate too. I reiterated that I only wanted ala carte meals but the guy just shrugged it off and said "maybe the staff did not understand."

We decided to stay a bit so that we can order more since we only ordered 5 small servings of food (sushi platter, 1 fried rice, yakiniku, tempura and karage) and already got charged $92. The same guy told me that it was actually better that we have been charged with that rate because it will cost us more to pay ala carte with the food we already had. Seriously mate, we are regulars at other Okami branches so we have a clear idea on how much we are spending and also how to make most out of the $34/head.

I reorder the same food which again, arrived very slowly. Funny thing is, the rice never coincided with the serving of the other meals so it's either we're eating just the meat or pure rice at a time which is so weird. We ended up leaving after we paid and did not bother waiting for the other meals to be served. 1.5 hrs of time wasted and $92 went off just like that. I didn't even feel full at all because of the tiny servings per plate. This is so different from our experience at other Okamis. Btw, they also refused when I ordered 2 servings of tempura. So weird. I was so excited to be here as we were also visiting the place we used to live at for 5 years as they finally have an Okami but I think I'll just stick to the Melbourne branches until they've resolved their serving technique. Maybe that's their 'method' to drive people away who are sick of waiting for their orders to come. The meals are nice and fresh, no question about that, but the service, it was just utterly...

Very poor and disgusting service and food! I understand that it was a Saturday night which most of the customers would visit your shop to spend their lovely weekend with their love one. However, if you know that you have such huge amount of customers, 55 tables to be served, please get adequate manpower to be ready for weekends. Plus, please do not help the customers to decide what to eat, you are serving 'all you can eat' section, which mean the customers can have all dishes shown on the menu, I couldn't believe that there was staff wanted to help the customers to decide what they should order on the 'all you can eat' section, so unbelievable and ridiculous!

The staff that helped us to order, I am sure she is a bit higher position in the restaurant, really 'thank you' for helping us to decide what we should order. We wanted to order miso soups and takoyaki because of someone decision, we didn't get any miso soups and having 2 plates of takoyaki eventually. After the entrees, we even have waited up to 45 minutes for the mains.

The tastes of takoyki, miso steak, the fried dishes and are awful. The friend dumpling are so oily and the tempura as well as the katsu chicken were having oily but soft skin. I think that the other tables if customers who sitting in the same rows feel disappointed too with the services, they looked anger and annoyed.

This was not me and my friends the first time visited Okami, we visited few times in Melbourne branches. We are from Swan Hill, having day off for one day and plan for a while for this dinner, after this bad experience, we willing to drive more than 4 hours to have Okami in other branches, but not for 2.5 hours driving for Okami Bendigo again. Of course the re are still some staff that doing their job and treat us politely, thank...

TLDR - beware of the male manager/waiter, treated me like I was stupid and yelled at me. This has never happened to me before. It seems to be a common theme in their other reviews. Initially was gonna give 3-4 stars but to be understanding that it was a busy night but then the waiter/manager yelled at me and looked at me like I was stupid while I was trying to order dessert. I dont think this is appropriate for a restaurant. Average food, menu is good as it gives a good images representing the food. Affordable all-you-can-eat restaurant. Busy Thursday night at the restaurant but not an excuse for dismissive and cold/rude service. Was not given menu at the beginning, was only given one for 4 people. Had to ask for water multiple times and had to pluck our own soy sauce from an empty table. Also had to get waiters attention multiple times before getting their attention to order again. Waiter/manager walked away when not finished ordering. When clarifying orders he was yelling at us and was plainly rude and dismissive. Not accomodating and bad at communicating. I also noticed he would preferentially serve customers rather than us. When serving food, one server would just leave it on the corner of the table without telling us. The others would let us know what it was. Spoons were just dropped on the table. But overall service was not good at communicating to us. Frantic lady walking around restaurant was not good for the atmosphere. Overall, an average restaurant, would NOT recommend coming in a due to the disrespect...