Soya Woking — Restaurant in Woking

After several exchanges with Soya, they have now admitted they are under new management. Now I can understand why the steep contrast from my many previous dining experiences with Soya In my first review of Soya, I gave them 5*. They used to have excellent service and greet us by name whenever we rang and be very personable whenever we visited in person. This last experience was a complete contrast to my previous experiences. These are my reasons why I am now giving Soya 1*:

1. Dishes either too bland or too salty, flavours are no longer authentic. Sushi and Okonmiyaki lacked the unami taste the eel sauce would usually offer. Prawn rolls were bland even with the sauce provided. Kanpoongi extremely salty – needed lots of water and rice to down it! Also lots of lemon chunks in it, instead of chicken pieces – shock to the tastebuds and misleading!

2. Skimping on ingredients - No sauce on England roll and very little mayo on the Okonomiyaki. The Okonomiyaki was also flat as a crepe! An authentic okonomiyaki is usually about 2cm thick! We also only got one prawn roll with only two tiny prawns in it as well. For that price, we can usually expect two rolls at others restaurants serving twice the amount of prawns. The worst example of skimping on ingredients was on the Oyster Stew which you’ll read about next.

3. We purposely ordered the 'Oyster Stew' over the 'Seafood Stew'. We received what appeared to be the Seafood Stew (as there were mixed seafoods and we recognised it from a previous order). I informed them about this and they told me what I received was the Oyster Stew. They explained the Seafood Stew has no Oysters but the Oyster Stew has both mixed seafood and one oyster. The JustEat menu clearly called it 'Oyster Stew' with no mention of mixed seafoods. I said I only got one oyster in the stew and they said that was correct as oysters are expensive. Quite upset at this point, they agreed to give me an exchange for a stew with a few more Oysters. I gave them back the old stew. I opened the new stew and there was just two oysters, same veg, and less soup. They basically gave me the same stew but took out the mixed seafood. So very disappointed and what a waste of petrol and my money. I can buy a whole giant bag of frozen oysters for the same price! I can also buy two very delicious freshly made stews from the Korean supermarkets in New Malden for the same price too – and with much more content. I felt completely conned of my money. This was the worst of all the dishes and the biggest disappointment of all.

4. Delivery guy was rude and unhelpful - he didn't believe we had our address right as he couldn't find us. He went down one street too and managed to get lost and very flustered. He kept telling me to come out to the main road to find him. In the current pandemic or not, I didn't think that was a very reasonable ask. He was not apologetic or even remotely embarrassed when he realised he completely missed our turning and how close he actually were to us at his initial location. I regret giving him a tip in my payment.

We will not be giving Soya another chance unless their management changes again. They were not one bit apologetic to any one of...

Soya Woking Overall 🌟🌟🌟🌟

We visited there last week during Easter Holiday. Not very busy when we arrived here so you don’t need to book the table if you want to have dinner in there.

We order: Superior Platter 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Including:8 Pcs sashimi, 8 pcs nigiri, tobiko gunkan, 8 pcs tuna & avocado rolls; Served with miso soup. And they gave us one extra miso soup for us which is very welcome and very friendly! The whole thing is very delicious and very filling. And the price is amazing and worth to pay. All sashimis are great and taste fresh.

Kimchi pancake 🌟🌟 A little bit too dry and some of the pancakes are a bit burnt in another side.

Korean Spicy Crispy Squid 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Spicy crispy Squid is my all time favourite! 🤪 and it taste really good! You can see they look golden colour which is very perfect 😍 they put some chilli power on top so it wasn’t very spicy but you will like it. They also provide some salt with chilli powder mixed together and it is really good with the squid.

Beef Dolsot Bibimbap 🌟🌟🌟 It taste nice but not many beef inside there and I barely can’t taste it. They mixed it with the spicy sauce which is if you don’t want it you can just skip it but I recommend you to add on some cause it tastes good and won’t be too spicy. And you can see they mixed with some onions, garlic & vegetables and egg also. Overall is pretty good.

All together cost nearly £60 which is pretty acceptable price. It is not easy to find a good quality of Japanese food in UK so I am very lucky that I found it! Will definitely come visit again and highly recommended for everyone who loves...

The risk of a tedious journey stuck on the M25 sent us to Woking last minute and we were glad to be able to book Soya for an early dinner. The choice is somewhat bewildering and this immediately sent alarm bells ringing. It's been long established that eateries can generally achieve much better care and quality when they focus on only a select range of dishes. We chose across the menu to suit differing preferences at the table. It was all prepared adequately, but nothing to write home about. Tempura prawns were certainly on the thickly coated side, taking away from the delicate seafood flavour. The sweet chilly chicken resulted in a surprisingly big portion for a starter, but had good flavour, even if the little nuggets were on the harder side of tender chicken. The ramen offers a huge portion again and was completely inoffensive but also utterly unexciting. This also afflicted the Korean BBQ and Dolsot Bibimbap, which made for a rather repetitive eating experience that never fully delivered. Soya served us well for impromptu dinner plans avoiding gridlock and probably in its genre is still a decent place. That said, I'd strongly recommend that they focus on a few things to do really well to offer something that truly excites customers. The flavour, cookery, and dining experience suffered from the...