Oshio — Restaurant in Columbus

I ate a pleasant meal yesterday 9-12-2022] at Oshio [Sushi • Kitchen • Bar] at 974 W. Fifth Ave. in the "Fifth by Northwest" neighborhood of Columbus.

Oshio does not open until 4:00 p.m. most days so I had to carefully plan my visit so that I would arrive after they had opened.

Old-timers like me who remember the former Sohio gas stations [Standard Oil of Ohio will be able to spell the word "Oshio" by switching the first two letters of the word "Sohio" and then reversing the capitalization.

Before arriving at Oshio, I had been unable to decide between two potential food choices but ended up ordering both of those food choices because one of them had actually been an appetizer.

I first ordered my first food choice: "Crispy Rice" panko breaded rice, avocado, serrano pepper, spicy mayo, eel sauce, and your choice of either spicy tuna or spicy crab. (4x)].

I had been assuming that that my "Crispy Rice" would have been the same size as a full-sized bowl of fried rice [except that it would have included "crispy rice" instead of "regular rice"] when in fact it had been an "appetizer" that had consisted of four vertically-presented biscuit-sized blocks of white rice with additional food items on top. The rice had been fried so that it would stick together as a single piece and then had been topped with the above-described food items.

I picked up the first of the four pieces of "Crispy Rice" but it fell apart as soon as I had picked it up. I asked my server for a fork since my hands had not been working at all for picking up the falling-apart "Crispy Rice" pieces and I could not figure out how to use chopsticks [my only other option at that point] for that purpose.

After I had eaten my four pieces of "Crispy Rice" [with a fork], I had still been hungry so I decided to order my second food choice: "Fire Chicken" [spicy garlic chicken stir-fried with broccoli, onions, carrots, mushrooms, serrano, napa cabbage, and a side of white rice].

My "Fire Chicken" had been quite delicious and had been far more "filling" than it otherwise might have been since I had previously eaten an appetizer [that I typically would not have ordered with a meal].

I want to mention at this point that the room decorations at Oshio are superb. I had been quite impressed by how well their space has been designed.

Several times, while I had been completing my meal, my server asked me if I wanted a box [to take my remaining food home]; I decided to finish my entire meal in spite of the fact that I had been there for a while and I had been becoming quite full because of the large amount of food that I had already eaten.

If you are looking for some delicious Asian food in a beautiful environment, I strongly recommend Oshio.

But be sure not to arrive there until after 4:00 p.m. [Monday to Friday [or not at all...

We called Sunday in anticipation of restaurant week. When they answered, I asked if they were doing a special Monday open (not normally open) for restaurant week and the server went to check. He said they were closed and I asked if reservations were recommended. Before he went to go check he asked me if I had any other questions for him so he didn’t have to go and keep checking....that struck me as kind of weird but fine. He came back and said yes, so we made a reservation for 7:15pm Wed. We arrive that day and there is no reservation made for us and the place is packed. I had to show the server my phone call log to get us a seat. Getting our orders in was fairly quick but after our bottle of water went our waiter never checked or gave us a refill. We flagged him down after an hr to get more. It took 2 hours to get one appetizer (we each ordered 3 dishes for restaurant week). Both of our sushi orders included miso soup so I don’t know why he didn’t just give us those earlier so we wouldn’t starve. When we asked how much longer he apologized and said he didn’t know because they had one experienced sushi chef teaching a new sushi chef....uh doesn’t that seem like poor planning for restaurant week? Especially if you only do the restaurant week menu for dinner? We did get our food after 2.5 hrs but the waiter forgot our second bowl of miso soup—we didn’t bother telling him because it was so crazy. The gyozu dumplings were good, the fried panini was ok, the other sushi tasted kind of meh...think Kroger quality, but I was really bothered by their Sunday Morning roll. It was supposed to be deep fried but the outside fried part was just mushy and looked like batter without being fried. Even worse the whole thing just tasted like a lump of uncooked dough. For dessert we got the chocolate soufflé and creme brulee which were good. Overall I...

Came here for restaurant week. The food was actually pretty good. The gyoza was quite good, but the agadashi tofu was not as crunchy as I expected. May have been sitting in the broth a little too long. The beef bulgogi was good, and the sushi was interesting. Didn't expect the fried banana on the paradise roll to work but it did. Could've used a little more avocado. Red dragon was fine. If you like spicy tuna then you'll like this. Wish they offered more rolls on the RW menu that didn't have cream cheese. The pumpkin cheese cake was nice, as was the creme brulee. Wish they didn't run out of chocolate souffle.

The actual running/management of the restaurant was lacking. Called to make a reservation, but the person who picked up only took down my name and time, and not number in my party. Didn't matter though cause when we arrived, the hostess did not have our reservation on file. Luckily was still able to get our name in and got seated after 15-20 minutes. The starters and bulgogi came out at a reasonable time, but we waited almost 1.5 hours for our sushi. We spent about 2.5 hours total in the restaurant, with probably 2 hours of that just waiting for our food. It was quite evident that the kitchen needed more sushi chefs, especially for restaurant week. It's hard to put the blame on anyone cause it was clear that they simply overestimated their ability to deal with restaurant week.

All in all, the food was good, but disappointed in...