Izakaya — Restaurant in Beavercreek

My wife and I were really looking forward to this place opening, with the rough launch we decided to wait until her birthday, roughly a month later. Right from the start, we were severely disappointed. The outside of the restaurant is plain black with tinted windows, and some neon bubble letter stickers that said anime, pizza, drinks (something along those lines). Nothing that really said, "hey, this is an anime themed restaurant". Walk in, and with the lack of any real anime "theme" outside of having tvs on the wall playing Dr. Stone, and a couple of neon lights shaped like anime characters, you'd think it was any other bar/lounge. Kind of expected employees to be dressed up, but whatever, wear comfortable clothes to work, I get it. So we sat down, and the menus we are handed look worn and ripped, even faded somehow. Again, brush it off, rough launch, lets try some of this food. Ordered bulgogi tots, I ordered the Titan Serum cocktail, and my 37 week pregnant wife ordered Satoru Gojo mocktail. Neither drink was made correctly. Hers was missing the whipped cream, and mine was extremely watered down, so much that i couldnt actually taste anything other than club soda. I wasnt sure there was alcohol in it, and definitely didnt get even a hint of cranberry juice. Sent mine back and ordered a coke instead as i was assured the drink was made correctly. The tots were very mid. We both had some sort of weird aftertaste from the sauce, and it was almost gritty, as if it had been frozen or something. Maybe it just wasnt cooked thoroughly and brown sugar hadnt broken down. Not sure what it was, but was a little put off, again. Now we get to our actual lunch order. I ordered the Yandere pizza, and the wife ordered the Pocheeto corn dog. One of the sauces on the pizza had the same grainy/gritty texture i experienced with the tots, and it appeared to have been cut by a blind man. A couple pieces were only 1.5inches wide, and one of them was nearly 1/4 of the total pizza. It wasnt a taste problem, just shows someone in the kitchen really doesnt care. The corn dog was advertised half mozzarella, half beef dog. Okay, we both assumed that meant it was a dog cut in half length-wise with a mozz stick fried together. No, strangely it was cut in half at the width. So you only get mozz with no dog for half, and only dog with no mozz for the second half, seemed rsther strange, but if thats how its usually made, i apologize for criticizing that part. Overall, all of our food and drinks were mid at best, with weird textures and an apparent lack of concern for presentation. As i was getting up to wash my hands another employee walked by with his pants (and boxers) sagging so low his bare bottom was exposed, right at eye level. Absolutely disgusting, especially as he was walking into the kitchen. Now I had the explaination for everything, from the disappointing appearance of the restaurant itself, to the rough launch, to the ill-prepared food. Theres no standard. After speaking with the manager it was obvious he heard it all before and is basically refusing to address these concerns. Here's the best part, several hours later around dinner time, my wife started getting violently ill. Again, 37 weeks pregnant... That can be dangerous, even fatal if she goes into labor. It went on all night and as I write this review she is still getting sick almost 24 hours after our initial visit. Food poisoning. I myself developed another symptom typically associated with food poisoning overnight as well. They did discount our bill, and offered an additional discount on our receipt, which we left at our table, as we will not be back. I can excuse less than exciting decor, but bad food and skimping on alcohol for an $11 cocktail, the unprofessionalism, and then food poisoning to...

Hopefully, I will be able to make this review higher after another visit, but definitely going to give them a couple months to work out the kinks.

We had a reservation for 8:45, which we were about 10 min early for. There was only one host working, who was also bussing the tables, which seemed to really slow the seating process down. We were not seated until 30 min after our reservation. We also had to say something to the host about our reservation again, as it seemed he was about to seat a party who walked in after us before us. They did seat us next after that, but even before that there was a party of 6 waiting for awhile before us and when the table was finally cleared off, the host didn't notify them. When they asked about it, the host said something along the lines of "I knew there was a party of 6, but didn't know where you went." Half of the party had been in there the whole time, but the host never called their name or anything, which seemed to cause some issues overall with seating.

Once we were seated, my party of 4 ordered 2 on tap Japanese beers and two mixed drinks. The first beer came out quickly, but for some reason it took over 15 min for the other to come out, along with one of our mixed drinks. The second mixed drink never came out, so we finally asked about it after 30 mins of waiting. We didn't get the last drink until after our food came out.

Our server also didn't check on us much, which led to us having to get up and ask for water a few times. I would have understood if they were busy, but at this time it was after 10PM and it wasn't nearly as busy as it was when we started. Frequently, we saw our server appearing to stand over by the bar (on the side by the bathrooms), but we were directly across from the bar, so it made it hard to ask for their help or try to wave them down since they didn't seem to be coming near our table very frequently.

Also, we had to ask for napkins and they gave us bar napkins. When eating pizzas with sauces on them, bar napkins weren't really cutting it.

The other issues we had is that I asked for 2 toppings to be take off my pizza, which they were, but when we got the bill I had been charged extra for removing them. The server fixed this for us, but because the receipts have you pay by QR, we once again had to try and find our server to get this fixed.

On the positive, the food was great. We ordered 4 pizzas, the Crab Rangoon dip, and a Korean corn dog and they were all delicious.

However, due to all the kinks that need to be worked out, we want to give Izakaya some time to streamline their service and offer better customer service before we return.

I would highly suggest hiring someone separate to bus tables or have the servers bus their own tables so the host can focus on seating, or hire multiple hosts, so there is at least always one able to attend to the customers. Also, implenting a better way to organize reservations and walk-ins and ensure you have a host who is comfortable being loud and calling out party names, instead of looking around and trying to identify faces.

I do love the concept, and the environment and food are great, but the service was so subpar I don't think I can fully recommend going here until...

Honestly wish I had more good to say about this place. It's really cool and I like what they're trying to do but a loooooot of excuses for basic restaurant things.

Lets start with food safety because this is paramount to me. Didn't see anyone wash their hands the whole time I was there. Kinda don't even know if they even have a hand washing sink at the bar. Literally heard bar tenders talking out loud about how their hand have been sticky all day. 😬 A drink was spilled at the bar that nobody cleaned up for the whole 3 hours I was there.

Food- Pretty decent but definitely not worth an 80 minute wait at the bar for 2 corn dogs. Which I honestly don't think were coming until I reminded them of my order 1 hour later. Im something of a restaurant manager myself so has a small chat with the FOH manager about some of the logistics because I find it to be a pretty interesting place. However they said there were 15 kitchen staff on the clock and they "needed more" even after clarifying my question(???) and it only takes about 6 minutes to make one of the corn dogs? I really hope he misunderstood my question as it wasn't even busy at all at this time. Roughly 40-60% of the tables were full. If that. People were talking about logistical issues but it didnt seem like a lot of the kitchen staff even knew what they were holding in their hands when they walked up front. "Is this sugar dusted?" "Idk". "Is this the Izakaya?" "Idk". Maybe the training needs to be re-evaluated as well as the logistics and POS because blaming it on the POS kinda seemed like a cop out.

Drinks- Definitely the star of the show here. The Sylveon - 7.5/10 creamy vodka/grenadine drink. The Midoriya 9/10 - Watermelon whiskey sour. (Crazy. I hate Midori normally) Hollow Purple - 9/10 (1 point reduction because it was blue and not purple. Lol)

Service- Ehhhhhh much to be desired. At least 12-15 FOH employees. Loooot of standing around. Waited 20 minutes for bartender to take my order when she only had 3 patrons. Crazy. Heard them stand around and constantly talk about when the next people were coming in to take their place. Heard my bartender rave about how the owner kicked someone out for tipping them only a couple dollars. (Couldnt blame anyone for not being impressed by the service.) People who ordered after me got their food first people who ordered before me still hadnt received their food when I got mine. It was a whole mess. Every guest that was served by the bartender was greeted with a "What do you want?" Lolll. I tipped $25 on a $50 bill and no joke the bartender still seemed dissatisfied. The only person that tried talking to me at all was the FOH manager which I spoke of before and he actually seemed like a pretty nice guy. Id keep him around. Idk the service was pretty weird and definitely hurt the atmosphere and broke the immersion over all.

Will definitely be back because it has potential but there's a lot of work to be done...