OTOKI japanese restaurant — Restaurant in Celje

I've probably dinned here more than a dozen times, and gotten their take-out at least double that amount of times. I used to eat their food at least once a week when I was a student in Celje (sometimes more if I felt like it). I currently work a job that makes it hard for me to visit, and I have to say, I miss the place haha.

The food is/was always top-notch, the service was great every single time I was there, the waiter is a funny guy, cracks a joke every so often which was pleasant!

Always got my food within a reasonable time, and it didnt take long for the waiter to notice when I was done eating (even won their Neko game once and got a 10% discount, which was nice haha).

Those are all my positives, but now the slight negatives:

While it is clearly a Japanese style restaurant, and you can clearly see that upon entering, it doesnt 'really' resemble a true Japanese restaurant. And the more you are there, the less "Japanese" it seems. The music that plays is NOT Japanese (not even Asian music for that matter), which definitely breaks some of that 'immersion'. The portion-to-price ratio is very high. Japanese food in general isnt very filling, unlike western food, so every single time i went there i had to order: 2x 8-piece sushi plates, 1x 4-piece sushi plate, a ramen soup with chicken, and mochi ice cream, and ended up paying around 30€, and to some that might be a reasonable price, but its just a liiiiittle bit on the expensive end for my liking.

Overall, a very enjoyable experience I'd say, looking forward to...

I will only come again if I have no other choice. “The Unagi sushi roll” we had was not so good! My opinion the chef may not agreed but it tasted too much of the sesame and hardly taste the eel which supposed to be the key ingredient. The rice was too soft!

The fried rice dish was ok; my wife had the salmon noodle kind of stir fried and noodle was watery (wet), hardly any salmon inside. My daughter had Teriyaki chicken rice but only the plain rice, My opinion apart from the name Teriyaki it doesn’t taste like any Japanese cuisine. I would say if you follow any Google Teriyaki Chicken recipes will taste better that!

We have been to many great Japanese restaurants around the world so we know what good Japanese foods taste like. This one surely ok for the local since they got many awards and good reviews. But definitely not for anyone who got high expectations for...

Zelo odstopa od avtentične japonske kulinarike. Sushi riž se mi zdi da sploh ni začinjen ali pa je premalo začinjen. ❌ Ramen je že na ogled zelo mimo. ❌ Udon rezanci niso to to, morali bi biti bolj debeli, pravokotni in ne ploščati ❌ Udon kot sama jed je ponavadi juha, kar je na meniju je yaki udon ❌ Piva vseh treh velikih pivovarn Asahi, Kirin in Sapporo ✔ Izgled sushija ✔ Ramune sok ✔ Dobavljiv tudi v Asia supermarket BTC Ljubljana, če kdo želi kupiti ali še poskusiti kaj drugega.

V Celju za sushi priporočam Tao. Za ramen pa edini ki se lahko približa japonskemu avtentičnemu pa v Ljubljani, Ramen by Maru, imajo shoyu, shio, miso ramen.

Ker kritik ne mora odgovoriti mnenju lastnika/restavracija, dodaja k predhodnemu mnenju:

Čisto nasplošno povedano. Da, obstaja različne varjante za različe regije. V večini se udon nudli režejo na roko zato so pravokotnih oblik. Z besedo temni udon nudli.. mislite soba nudli, ki so narejeni z ajdo verjetno? Okrogli nudli se pa v večini uporabljajo za ramen, ker se testu doda alkalna voda (po domače soda bikarbona zmešana v vodi). To naredi testo elastično, nudli pa so narejeni tako, da se testo vleče in vleče dokler ne nastane željen diameter nudlov.

Kritik enkrat do dvakrat letno po 1 mesec (20 delovnih dni) obiskuje japonsko in je bil 6x na japonskem izključno zaradi kulinarike. Poskušenih je bilo zelo veliko jedi v različnih restavracijah po mestih in po "vaseh", v restavracijah in izakayah, tudi na domu. Prepotoval sem od Sapporo, Tokyo, Nagano, Hamamatsu, Osaka, Kyoto, Kagawa (znano po udon).

Kritik je bil tudi 3x v Düsseldorf v japanese quarter, kjer je veliko Japonskih restavracij z japonskimi kuharji, japonska trgovina s sestavinami ter japonska knjigarna.

Kritik je 3 leta imel punco z japonske na japonskem. Kritik je prijatelj s kuharico v Tokyo, ki vsak dan pripravlja hrano, je bila zaposlena v sushi restavraciji in je bila tudi na obisku v Sloveniji, kjer smo obiskali Ramen by Maru, Tokyo piknik in MoySushi v Ljubljani.

Nekaj jedi ki jih je kritik jedel na japonskem več kot nekajkrat: Sushi, Gyudon, Gyoza, Udon, Ramen, Miso, Oyakodon, Takoyaki, Tayaki, Onigiri, Somen, Tempura, Okonomiyaki, Yakisoba, Monja, Wagyu, Yaktori, Tamagoyaki, itd. (je preveliko hrane za našteti)

Kritik ima pravico izraziti...