Sushi Takuma — Restaurant in Osaka

Summary and observation: Food is ok but not wow, and it was just a bitter experience from the get go. This would’ve been easily a 1 star if it wasn’t for the other Japanese waitress who saved the day and served us at a latter part of the meal and ensured the food was well explained and brought back the Japanese high standard service. Make sure you get to sit at the sushi bar when you make the reservation if you go with the omasake menu (Or else just order separately if you really really want to try) My guess is, as a foreigner, the chef may not be able to communicate (explain the food) with you too well, so adjust your expectation or don’t have any. If the price justify the service and food? Dropping $150usd on a dinner is certainly not the type who is on a budget and have decent expectation. Sushi Takuma is just not cutting it on the Japanese cuisine standard, especially the service by the English speaking waitress, which made us felt like not being welcomed. Hopefully, it can be improved and that’s what this review is for.

Experience: My wife and I passed by this resturant a block away from our hotel and we thought it looks quite authentic and the omakase menu is quite reasonable (i.e 5000, 7000, 9000yen). We asked our Japanese friend to book a table for the 7000yen omakase menu for the experience. Took our friend a few tries at different time to get through the phone as it opens quite late, but we got a 8:30 reservation and quite excited and made our plans around it.

We walked in 8:30 on the dot and was and welcomed by a perfect English speaking waitress and was seated in a little room instead of the sushi bar where the chef is at (as we walked in two foreigner were refused to be seated on the sushi bar table). My wife, with more Japanese cultural knowledge then told me something is not right as the omakase menu is supposed to be served at the sushi bar and the chef will randomly make the sushi of his choice one by one as you eat. We asked the waitress why, but we were told they go by the order of the time we made the reservation (the waitress asked us when did we make the reservation, which means she couldn’t tell the order of who called first). We didn’t argue further as it was our Japanese friend who made the reservation. Here we are, sitting in a private room (maybe the only time you don’t want to be one) staring through the wooden door at the chef serving the other customers one sushi at a time with detail explanation. We thought of leaving as the whole “experience” is out the door, but we just want to be respectful of the culture and stayed. That’s when I started to google and read some of the reviews and I found my wife an I in a similar situation as this 1 star reviewer for the next hour or so (I feel you).

The food: The omakase menu listed 6-10 small dishes & 6-10 sushi. we had around 7 dishes and 8 sushi. The dishes were served one by one and explained in a rush by the waitress in English (most of the time we need to ask multiple times). The mini sea cucumber is more notable, while interestingly we were told this “pig brain” look alike is cod fish. I asked myself, what part of this looks like a fish and later I confirmed if it is intestines and the waitress confirmed yes (again later we found out from our Japanese friends that it is where the fish stores the sperm or egg 😅TMI). As you can see, other dishes were generic sashimi (show up again as sushi), which is average taste. I quite enjoyed the last dish which is Mackerel topped with egg white. The sushi, as you can see all on one plate, not bad, but not omakase style, which I could’ve easily found elsewhere (Fatty tuna and the uni are...

Me and my wife are big fans of omakase style dining and decided to try out sushi takuma based on reviews online for our wedding anniversary. In particular, we are huge fans of Edo style sushi having tried numerous sushiyas on our trips to tokyo, so upon entering the sushi takuma, we requested for an omakase that weighed more heavily on nigiri than grilled dishes which we agreed would cost us JPY6000 per person.

Unfortunately what followed was one of the worst Japanese sushi dining experiences we have had in Japan. The chef proceeded to prepare a plate of the most generic sushi (10 pieces) laid out as on a single platter whilst diners around us were served on a dish by dish basis in typical omakase fashion. Not only were they given an explanation on each dish but they were also offered more exotic varieties of fish as we had expected.

Having concluded our meal in under 20 minutes, we were left to finish our bottle of wine whilst watching other diners enjoy the experience we expected to have. Not only were the other diners charged the same as us (omakase ranges from JPY5k-9k here) but in our excess time we actually noticed that ordering each piece of sushi we were provided in isolation would've actually resulted in a cheaper alternative to the meal we were served.

I cannot say if this treatment was because we were not local Japanese for sure but I do hope that anybody else celebrating an occasion of similar importance would seriously consider twice before trusting their dining experience to a chef that would be willing to be careless with a meal that is by no means cheap.

To elaborate on some of the finer details: The waitress spoke perfect english and as such i dont think much was lost in translation No wasabi was offered to us or included in our sushi

Ultimately, as many of you who would be willing to read this far would know - making nigiri sushi is an art form. In terms of visuals, very little distinguishes high end sushi from conveyor belt varieties, but once tasted, there is very little to hide behind. The sushi made on this night had no care put into it whatsoever and could easily resemble the variants found at any affordable sushiya in Japan.

I have no doubt the chef is capable of more, I even witnessed it being served to patrons adjacent to me. Unfortunately, this is the nature of omakase and the trust you place in a chef's judgement on any given night. I wish you all much better luck than I had, i for one am headed to the nearest ramen joint to forget this experience as...

Photos look great but were extremely disappointed with the food. The price is fair but I would say that with the same price, I had a way better experience in another sushi restaurant in Kobe. First of all, this restaurant seemed to be specialized in serving tourists. The sushi rice was not nice and no taste at all. The fish is still good but nothing special, except the shrimp. We have ordered the most expensive set, however, we discovered that the chef repeated to serve the same sushi to us. We were shocked. It was not a professional behavior as he forgot the menus. Also, the same chef forgot to serve us 2 sushis at last. We were extremely shocked again as we didn’t believe this is what we see in Japan. The chef to me is also not professional at all. He said he is being chef for 10 years, but the food doesn’t tell the truth. The fried fish to me is like British fish fingers, the ones you can find from TESCO frozen fridges. To me, it is not a good dining experience and I will never go again. Of course, if you are searching for normal omakase experience, you may visit this restaurant.

Another story about the restaurant: I realized that I left my sunglasses in the restaurant a few days after my visit. I have asked my hotel’s staff to call them to ask if they picked up my sunglasses in the morning. However, as I want to take it back earlier, I went to the restaurant directly to ask if they picked up my sunglasses. My friend used Japanese to communicate to prevent any misunderstanding. They said no so I left with my friends. When I backed to the hotel, the staff told me that they kept my sunglasses. I was furious about it as I went there by myself and they said NO! It turns out that I went to the restaurant again on the same day. It is not a problem if I was not in a hurry, as it was my fault leaving there. But they knew it, and they said no. This is a problem and I would...