Osaka Japanese Cuisine — Restaurant in Mint Hill

Worst takeout experience I've had that I can recall. Let me start out by saying that I've been enjoying the sushi from this restaurant for over 4 years since my wife and I moved to the area. This last visit was infuriating. I arrived right around the 20 minutes I was told my order would take, saw the bag that was eventually what I left with, and proceeded to sit around and wait for 45 minutes after being told my order was just waiting on one last roll. At no point during the 45 minutes of me sitting there did any employee or manager ever come up to me to apologize for the wait or to provide an explanation as to why it was taking so long. I also brought my dog along for the ride as I expected to be in and out (the windows were halfway down and it was cloudy, plus I checked on him multiple times, so he was okay at least). After 30 minutes of waiting I again approached the counter only to be told that "we're still waiting on the crazy roll" chuckle shrug and then had to stand around longer waiting for it to be made. I understand you were busy, but if you mess up an order, that order becomes priority until it's fixed. I've worked in numerous restaurants over the years and that's always policy. And why did no manager come up and say ANYTHING while I was sitting for so long? Incredibly disappointing the entire time. And the kicker? They didn't actually mess up my order, they just wrote the wrong thing on the box so I waited there while my sushi sat on the counter for about an hour more than it should have had to. Hopefully a new sushi place will move to...

So for the good news: the staff and the owner are SUPER nice! The bad news: the sushi is terrible. We ordered the onion soup which is suppose to be like clear soup at other restaurants but this soup had no onion crunchies in it and mine had a fishy taste even though the staff said there is no fish stock in it. I could not eat mine. I ordered the Kiss Me Roll and it had spicy salmon on top and that's fine, that's what I ordered but it was so spicy I had to scrape the top off. When the owner came over to check on us I let him know that the soup wasn't edible and the sushi was way too spicy (and covered in sauce with dollops of hot sauce on top. The owner suggested I try the Super Crunchy Roll which had tempura shrimp in it and not spicy so I agreed. The Roll came to me in about 2 mins (all the food came out super fast which indicates that it's not fresh and it showed), the shrimp tail was left on both ends of the roll, when I pulled the shrimp tail off the entire shrimp came out and it was ice cold, mushy, not fresh at all and I didn't feel comfortable eating it plus it was covered in sauce which, to me, just my opinion, makes it seem they are hiding something. I told the owner I wasn't comfortable eating it and he was very nice and removed the soup and the 2nd roll from the bill. My husband ordered the shrimp hibachi and his shrimp were very small and vegetables were cut extremely small. The "fried" rice was nothing but white rice with a few peas thrown in. This was our first and last time going to Osaka and...

Old Update: Wonderful food and atmosphere. Such a great and friendly staff.

Updated Review: Covid measures are masks. They sanitize between visits. Can't have a table over 8 people. We had a table of 9 and they separated the group into 3 at one table and 6 at 2 tables placed together. It wasn't busy at all, but the quality of the sushi/sashimi wasn't up to their normal par. The sushi sashimi bento I ordered didn't come with pickled radish, which all the other times I've ordered it came with. We ended up with an order of takoyaki, when we ordered tamago (egg cake sushi). Didn't end up with the tamago and had to pay for the takoyaki. Our waitress didn't know Japanese words and ended up guessing what some of the orders were. She came back several times to ask questions about the order.

Overall, the visits here have been good. Today wasn't up to the normal par. The usual waiter we're used to was off today and he's fantastic. Sad that he wasn't there today. It seems that the sushi chef we're used to wasn't there either, which resulted in a change of quality on the sushi/sashimi. It was still tasty, but not up to the standard that I'm used to of...