Soto — Restaurant in Austin

Google policies: legitimate reasons for a review removal at the request of the business owner include false engagement, misinformation, deception, personal attacks, hate speech, harassment, spam, inappropriate language. This review will be as close to factually/objectively possible to illustrate my honest experience.

While it is possible I dined here on a bad day, I will not ignore how my group was treated.

Ordering our food via the waitress was smooth and seamless. She seemed knowledgeable of the menu items and could answer questions easily.

Before any food arrived, water refill was a 20 minute wait.

I ordered 11 nigiri. It took 45 minutes for the 1st nigiri to arrive; 85 minutes for the 4th nigiri to arrive. The timestamps are accurate because I took photos of the sushi as they arrived.

Ivory King Salmon nigiri out-of-stock notification came at 45 minute mark. Fuji-san (the replacement sushi) out-of-stock notification came at the 75 minute mark.

At ~110 minutes, my group had to cancel the rest of our orders because it was getting too late. When one of the employees received news we wished to leave in appropriate timely manner, he did not respond and instead quickly walked to the back to communicate with the kitchen. His demeanor shifted to a negative attitude upon our group. A more professional approach would be to respect our wishes and to offer positive bids for acknowledgment/condolences. When he came back to our table, he tried to justify the long wait times by telling my group the food was served on a "course by course" style. That did not make sense because no one in my group ordered Omakase. For what seemed like a final effort to retain our amiability, he offered shots for everyone. We didn't accept because we were just about to drive sober as we wanted to leave on time.

We never received the out-of-stock replacement sushi and it was still billed on the check. The waitress did correct this mistake.

If management does not address the logistics of the business, I anticipate difficulty retaining return customers and unfortunate/inevitable turnover of good staff like the waitress that tended my table.

TLDR opinions

4/5 initial service 3/5 ambiance 3/5 food quality 2/5 value 1/5 wait time 1/5 end service 1/5 I came to a $100+ restaurant to eat and have a good time. We left late+hungry and the vibes...

We went for the lunch and got dishes off of the lunch specials menu! First impression was being slightly ignored by our server. We walked in, the server saw us but didn’t acknowledge us, so I thought there’s a separate host who would seat you. A couple moments later after waiting at the door, the server who previously ignored us decided to seat us. So points off on service because I was so confused like am I supposed to seat myself or?? A heads up like “I’ll be there with you shortly” would be nicer.

We got the Uni pasta and Choice maki lunch specials (vegetable tempura with spicy salmon + alaskan rolls). We also got 3 pieces of salmon sashimi from the main menu. The flavoring here could use a bit less salt. A lot of the dishes were salty even the salad, which is supposed to be refreshing, was kind of salty. Miso soup + salad that came with the lunch specials were fine.

I enjoyed the rolls, which they gave a generous amount of salmon and a good ratio of rice to fish. I would come back for these rolls specifically because they were quite good.

The uni pasta was what I came there for. I was a little disappointed with the saltiness of the dish. It was extremely rich and heavy, expected, but it would have helped with the taste so much better if there’s more of a sweeter flavor. But that being said, the uni pasta was still very good. I wouldn’t come back for it though because I was having a hard time finishing it with all the saltiness. Also, most sushi restaurants that serve uni pasta use spaghetti noodles. Soto uses a kind of noodles that look kinda like ramen noodles tbh. I would have enjoyed it with actual spaghetti noodles, but that’s my personal preference.

The salmon sashimi had a sour sauce on top. I would prefer enjoying the sashimi by itself without any added sauces because if I’m paying more for fancy salmon sashimi, I’d like to taste the salmon on itself, so I don’t think the salmon sashimi was fatty and soft tbh. Like why would you need to add a sauce on top of regular salmon sashimi, which is kinda expensive, like is it not fresh enough lol? I didn’t order salad salmon.

Veggie tempura was fine. The sweet potato was very sweet though.

Overall, I would come back for the rolls and not the sashimi or...

My dinner at Soto last weekend was probably my favorite sushi meal that I’ve had in Austin (including one very special tasting at Otoko). Once we were settled, our server made sure to point out the specials that had been flown in from Japan that day. The menu only lists one option for omakase, but when we asked her about it, she mentioned several upgrades and customizations. We opted for the premium omakase ($250).

What followed was course after course (seriously, like 25 plates!) of fresh, delicious food. Each dish was dressed beautifully, and most times, the accompaniments also highlighted the flavor of the seafood. Many of the specials made an appearance, along with several items that weren’t on the menu. One highlight of the meal was when we were served a “treasure box” of different cuts of fish. We had caught the tail end of white truffle season, so Chef Andy came out to shave white truffle over one.

When enjoying omakase, I especially cherish meals where the sushi chef accounts for your preferences. This dinner was one of those meals. Our server made sure to ask if we were okay with “fishy” (saba, aji). I “joked” about wanting every course to be uni, and she picked up on it. Our omakase included every uni dish on Soto’s menu that day, including a tasting of Santa Barbara and Hokkaido varieties.

After a very filling set of nigiri, chef sent out an order of the uni pasta. I’ve had a couple of renditions of this dish, but Soto’s might be the best. You could really taste the uni, and the soft egg atop it was perfectly cooked. Even without informing the restaurant it was my birthday, I felt like I was getting special treatment.

Re: COVID, we chose to sit outside. The patio tables and chairs are standard wire mesh, and this was the one part of the experience that was slightly less awesome. We were sandwiched between two heaters, which made the cold bearable. Still, all of the staff that we interacted with had their masks over their nose and mouth at all times, and the tables inside of the restaurant seemed to have ample distance between them. Soto is clearly taking the...