OITA Soho — Restaurant in London

Let me start from the very beginning. I was planning a trip to london and was booking various restaurants for my stay here. I came across OITA Soho, and at first glance, it looked like a nice and prestigious restaurant, serving divine japanese dishes.

Fast forward to my trip, on this day, 25th december 2024 on Christmas. I get an email from OITA Soho telling me that for this day, they would only have a set menu, for 80 pounds.

This shocked me. I calling them to cancel my reservation, because quite frankly, 80 pounds for a platter of starters and one main dish was actually insane.

I ring up the restaurant, and first thing i hear is this asian lady on the other side of the phone and she was not nice. I tried to cance my reservation and i got told that due to me not cancelling atleast 48 hours in advance, i would have to a 40 pound cancellation fee. Either i go to OITA Soho and get the 80 pound set meal, or i cancel it due to the high price and pay an outrageous 40 pound cancellation fee.

I decided to still go, as it seems like the restaurant atleast still served good food, with the average 4.8 star rating on google backing it up. Thats when i realized, no drinks are included in the already high 80 pounds price tag AND theres a MANDATORY 15% service fee. Outrageous.

In the pictures you see attached to this review, is all i got. A platter of starters which isnt really that much food, and a chicken katsu curry.

Onto the food. The karaage was the highlight, as its their signature dish. I will not lie, the karaage was absolutely fantastic! And thats were the pros already end. The other piece of karaage was COLD. That just gives me the impression they dont freshly fry their karaage. They messed up the one thing they had going for them.

Sushi? Hideous. The sushi rice didnt taste like sushi rice, but day old rice they had laying around. Seaweed salad for some reason was extremely sour? The gyoza oh goodness me, that gyoza was quite literally storebought gyoza. And if it wasnt storebought, they need to hire a new head chef and get a new recipe for the gyoza because it tasted so storebought, i cant even fathom it. Everything else was average. Did i mention a 0,33 glass of coke costs 5 pounds?

Moving on to the main dish. I chose the chicken katsu curry, as its been a while since ive had it. I was so looking forward to that katsu curry, but its been ruined for me too. The sauce? It had a good flavor. But the texture? It was gelatinious. Like gravy that has been sitting out for too long. The rice was cold, so thats not good i guess. The chicken had absolutely zero flavor. It was like eating fried batter. They might as well just fry a bunch of batter and put that on the plate. Seriously, the coke might have been the best part of this meal and im not even exaggerating.

The service is where it gets atrocious. Remember the asian lady i mentioned that talked to me over the phone? Yeah, while i was “enjoying” my starters, she was arguing with quite a few other people, because of their set menu for today. Other people were thinking the same thing as me. Also did i mention they dont just put a 40 pound cancellation fee if theres more than 1 person? If theres more than one, each person HAS to pay a 40 pound cancellation fee.

One group of 6 people in particular were getting truly upset, not only do they not want to pay 80 pounds each for the set menu, they also do not want to pay 40 pounds each just to cancel a damn reservation. 6 times 40 is 240. 240 pounds to cancel. Thats more than outrageous, i cant even fathom that. I feel bad for the other service workers who have to work with that lady. Especially the young woman who served me. She even had to apologize because of the crazy prices. Seriously, they would have made MORE THAN ENOUGH profit today, especially since a lot of restaurants are closed. They did not have to do a “special” 80 pound set menu thats NOT valuable in any way. Did i also mention that on their regular menu, the service charge is optional? Yea. Just go to Haidilao. Its expensive but atleast...

Very disappointed. My husband and I are huge on reviews when it comes to picking out places to eat, shop, stay overnight, vacation etc. So, when we see 4.8 with over 1.7k reviews, you would think it would be at least a 4star?! The only person that was tentative to us was what appeared to be the manager on duty. The remaining staff looked miserable and did not care to be there. The food came out ALL AT ONCE. Miso soup, edamame, sushi and all. The edamame was cold! So cold, that I actually had to say something. When they brought it back, it was warm (not hot) and had so much salt on it, I literally could not even eat it. Even my husband who will eat anything so it won’t go to waste. The sushi itself I described as “tasteless” when asked how it was. We got 2 specialty rolls and one value roll. The only roll that tasted somewhat okay was the value roll and that’s only because it had spicy sauce on top. If it wasn’t for that, neither of the 3 rolls we ordered had any taste to them.

By the time we got to the end, we were just extremely disappointed and wanted to go. Did I mention that I only received one cup of water? Never any refills. I guess when you order tap water here, they roll their eyes because it’s free?! I mean, we did pay over 90.00 dollars on food.

I had to ask for the bill. The first person, said “no problem” while taking our plates. Person 1 proceeded to do other tasks instead of getting our bill. Fine. Personal 2-can we please have our bill. “Sure!” Person 2 proceeds to help people who just walked in the door instead of finishing one task! Literally took an additional 5 minutes before we received.

I have NO idea how...

A couple of weeks ago, I visited this restaurant in Chinatown with my sister, who was visiting me on holiday. I had chosen Oita after reading several great reviews and wanted her to have a lovely experience — unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case.

When we arrived, we were greeted by an older lady who asked if we had a reservation. We didn’t, and she kindly cleaned a table for us, mentioning that we would have 1 hour and 30 minutes to dine, which I completely understand as the restaurant seemed busy. However, her attitude felt rather cold and unwelcoming. Throughout our visit, I couldn’t help but feel that we were being ignored. At first, I thought it might have been because we didn’t have a reservation, but then I saw her warmly welcoming another couple — also without a booking — which made me think otherwise.

The way she placed the dishes on our table was quite abrupt, and after serving the food, she never came back to check on us. I don’t mean to say she’s bad at her job, but it genuinely felt like we were being disregarded, perhaps because we were foreigners or because I was there with my 4-month-old baby (by the way, there are no facilities for changing nappies).

It’s a real shame, because the food was absolutely fantastic — full of flavour and beautifully presented. Unfortunately, the poor service overshadowed what could have been a wonderful dining experience.

I’m writing this as someone who works in the hospitality industry in this country for several years, and I truly believe that kindness and warmth can make all...