Nara — Restaurant in Southampton

To start, the atmosphere is rather nice; pleasant seating arrangements with a nice interior and exterior decorative finish.

There is a nice range of food, albeit quite expensive for some of the dishes offered. For example, the Yakitori was not traditional and between the 4 skewers, they had about half a chicken breast worth of meat (all for £6.50!!). Furthermore, the sushi was very disappointing. The duck sushi roll was nice, but it did not include any cucumber (listed within the ingredients outlined in the menu). Also, the Nara special was also a disappointment as the roll comprised of over 85% rice and was quite bland. However, I will give props to the chef as he did customise the dish, as requested, and the food was served very quickly (the restaurant was half full and the food was still served pipping hot within 10-12 minutes).

As for service, I don't want to criticise the waitress, as she was quite obviously new (we all have to start somewhere!), but she was very polite and friendly.

Personally, I most likely will not return here as we have had far better experiences at Sakura, which is...

We took advantage of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme to have lunch here on Tuesday last week, excited for a rare treat of sushi. The restaurant itself is in need of a refresh and seems a bit run-down, but if you get into one of the booths it is comfortable. There is a decent variety of sushi options and my wife and I picked some of the more elaborate choices to enjoy. I can't now remember the exact rolls we ordered, but one of them was dragon. In any case, they were delicious and beautifully presented. You'll find the same options we went for a few pages into the sushi section and I would recommend these. I don't want this to be interpreted as a personal attack against the staff, it was obvious to me that they were working hard and very busy, but the service let down the experience a little bit. We ended up getting the wrong order, although we didn't realise this until the bill arrived, and it was difficult to get the attention of our waiter. Perhaps if there were more staff this would be less of an issue. Recommended if you...

I would like to give 0 stars. We booked a table for 6 people at 18.30 well over a week ago, when we arrived they had no knowledge of the booking until we showed the confirmation, we were then told we were too late.. having arrived at 18.25!! eventually we were shown to a table of 4!! .. we said although one of our party of 6 would not be arriving we would still need more seating so were given an extra chair, this made it a very cramped experience and we therefore could not order everything we wanted as there was limited table room. when the food finally arrived.. some 15 minutes between the first dish and the last to arrive to the table, the food was hardly worth the wait.. the maki I ordered was dry and my scallops burnt, our other party were also not overly impressed with their orders. The staff were rude, the booking process may as well not exist, the food was sub standard. I will definitely not return and I would advise others to go elsewhere, if you are looking for good sushi in Southampton.. there are...