Okuzono Japanese Dining — Restaurant in Jakarta

Located in the popular area of Senopati, Okuzono Japanese Dining serves great quality Japanese delights from a minimalist interior filled with wooden ornaments that look quintessentially Japanese. Arranged artfully under high ceilings, the seats are scattered in front of an open kitchen, inside tatami-lined rooms or enclosed in a booth. Artsy chandeliers, a long bar serving the best sake and a beautiful Zen garden adorn this restaurant. Its centerpiece is the restaurant’s signature mezzanine box seats, where guests can feast in an intimate setting while enjoying a 360-degree view of the entire venue.

With its authentic Japanese flavours, Okuzono Japanese Dining presents a variety of cuisines crafted by three chefs who come directly from Kyoto, Yokohama and Okinawa. Popular Japanese dishes that satisfy the Indonesian palate are grilled dishes, sashimi, rice, noodles and desserts. Okuzono serves and pairs everything perfectly with sake, genmaicha, shochu, green tea and many other high-quality Japanese liquors and teas.

As an appetizer, the aroma of roasted mushrooms in kinoko butter draws the attention. As the tea butter block slowly melts, soy sauce is poured over the mushrooms. The melted tea butter and soy sauce soak the mushrooms with richness for a sublime treat, meanwhile the warayaki salmon is cooked the traditional Japanese way on hay. The smoky salmon served with oroshi ponzu sauce is really tempting. Another classic dish is niku tofu with thinly sliced beef simmered in a soy sauce with tofu and green onions.

Committed to serving authentic Japanese flavours, Okuzono offers a series of new menus to surprise the palate. Kohaku sushi is inspired by gemstones and takes the form of nine small bowls, including sango (coral), ruri (lapis azuli) and shinju (pearl), that can be eaten individually or mixed together. There’s also the addictive chaba marinate, where chicken is marinated with sencha tea leaves and then baked with tea crumbs for a crunchy texture on the outside. Another new notable delight is the somen champuru, Okinawan stir-fried noodles with vegetables and katsuobushi (bonito flakes) on top. It’s a hearty comfort food favourite that is sure to please any crowd. Meanwhile, the chewy warabi mochi are served with generous portions of kinako sesame powder, brown sugar syrup and green tea ice cream to sweetly and succinctly sum up Okuzono’s brilliant...

Nice interior and ambience, the grilled beef is excellent and the overall taste and quality is well above average. For the price, while it's more on the high side, it's quite comparable to similar establishments in town, but varieties are a bit less.

The downside: The 60K price tag of individual portion of hot ocha is a bit ridiculous considering a lot of fine Japanese restaurants offering it for free or charge less than a third of what they're charging and what's make it worse, it's NOT refillable. I would say it's a trap for regular Japanese restaurant clients, since most of them don't bother to check the price of ocha.

Even worse, mine came out cold than how hot ocha supposed to be served and I had to ask them to reheat it again, a no-no for this kind of fine establishment. My advice: order any other drink, avoid the hot ocha.

PS: Just remembered what I found a bit annoying during my visit was when they put the time limit card (90 minutes max from 8:30pm to10pm) on our table, even though the restaurant is about around 50-60% occupancy and the time I think is a bit late for dinner.

It's actually not a nice gesture to put time limit in practice, but it's completely understandable for most patrons when the place is packed and a lot of people are waiting for seat... but at half occupancy and down to more or less 30% when we left at 9:30pm (less than the allotted time)? I found that just ridiculous, a...

It's not hard for me to give them the highest possible rating here as they have exceeded all of my expectation on a restaurant. They have a great food. They have a great and instagramable interior. They have a great and quick service. They have a great price point. They have a wide range of menu. I'm not a fan of salad but even the salad there also tastes so good (maybe bcoz of their salad dressing).

During my visit there, I order their lunch set menu, the first menu is Chicken Nanban Set which tastes so good but it's too creamy for my taste and the second menu is U.S Chaba Beef Marinated Set which is the best menu for me and I highly recommend this for you to try and you won't be disappointed.

For dessert, I get a Matcha Brownies which surprisingly also taste good with vanilla ice cream sitting nicely on the top of the brownies and the matcha powder have to neutralize all the overload sweetness and makes it taste really good.

I think Okuzono might be a perfect place for family gathering or even romantic lunch/dinner and again, I have to mention that this place is very instagramable.

The only downside that I can think of for Okuzono is the limited parking space due to their location and building layout but they also provide you with a Valet Parking Service but trust me, the space is limited so you might want to consider...