Doraku Sushi Kapolei — Restaurant in Oʻahu

I try to avoid reviewing places i did not like because taste in food is relative, but sometimes it needs to be said for the awareness of whomever takes the time to read.

Normally I can ignore the overpriced mediocre food commonly served at some of these in-vogue places, and i can always forgive errors in service. But i can not ignore or forgive negligence, gaslighting and apathy towards the situation.

The restaurant FORGOT about one of the main dishes we ordered. Since the server never came back to check on us we were unable to remind them of the mistake. Once they finally came back to see if we wanted anything else (before offering the check) we told them that we were missing one main dish.

At this point the lack of integrity started to show as they tried to play it off by saying that it should not take much longer and that they would check on the kitchen. When we said “no thanks” because more than one hour had already past and everyone else was done eating, they acted like we were the ones trying to cancel the order (the one they forgot about) and then offered to remove the item (the one they completely forgot to serve us) from the check because we were not happy with having to wait any more (you know, as a Favor to us). As if making us pay for food not served to us was even an option…

A restaurant that cares about service would have done something like “We are sorry about this mistake, please have this complementary (whatever) and we added an additional discount to your check. Again we apologize for this and we hope we can earn your patronage”. But here you get treated like its your fault that they forgot about providing you with the service you are expected to pay for and you should be lucky they don’t charge you for it. I don’t even blame the servers, this is incompetent management conducted by people that evidently could not care less about the client or the business.

TL;DR: this is Oahu. If you want good Japanese food you can find 8 other places without having to...

I usually dont write reviews about restaurants but this place was a total disaster. Food is ok. There are better places in town tbh. Their wagyu fried rice is a joke. Had tiny peaces of meat, It was mainly a white rice bowl with a fried egg on top and a server just mixes it for you.

Overpriced in a lot of the dishes. 20 dollar and up sushi rolls that fall apart easly and is a total mess. They also took a long time to serve us the food, we got our dishes separately and my in laws had to see me eat, While they were waiting for theirs. (I thought usually food comes together for the table so all can enjoy a meal together, not in this restaurant).

We waited more than 20 min in between for each dish to come to our table. I shared my dish with my pregnant wife because they never brough hers. I reminded the server several times throughout the night about her meal but kept saying that it was coming shortly and only got it until we had all finished our meal, but when she got it it was cold and very salty, she didn't finish it, and I had to go get her something else after coming there.

Very pushy about the desserts. How dare you to even offer us desserts after giving us a terrible experience with the food. We declined it obviously, the server went away and then after a few minutes she came just to my wife to ask her if she was sure about not having dessert which she declined again. Idk what she was trying to do.

And then some old lady (I guess manager or owner) comes and talks for about an hour to my inlaws about none sense I guess trying to cover up the bad service with a last minute convo and laugh. I paid the bill and left.

This place is a total joke. I will never go back and I highly...

The food was amazing and that’s the only reason why it had a 3 star. Willing to try again to see if there’s a different service and will edit review after, because the food was great. But this experience was our first time there. We got seated and wasn’t given drinks until about 20 minutes later. Not even a “sorry we are busy and will be with you when we can” I noticed they catered a little more towards the tourist than the locals that were there. Example they brought glass bottles of water to refill our water cups. But they just so happened to only be helping the tourist refill theirs. I don’t mind filling my own water but if you’re gonna do theirs, do everyone’s. Since we were waiting so long I could notice everyone’s orders were taken already, and even after getting our water we still waited longer to have our orders taken. Our food slowly came out in a span of an hour. Would have been a little better if they at least waited on the food that is faster to make so that it would all come out closer in time. Aside from everything else it would have been fine but there was more. A couple times I tried to flag down and he just zoomed right by. He only stopped by twice, to take our order and to ask how was everything. Our plates kept piling up on the side of the table When it came to me asking for the check, he stopped by two tables, one was a big group before we even got our check handed to us.. Then I waited while he talked to his coworkers before I even got my card back. All of this I waited over 20 minutes just to pay and get my card back.

The food though was really good. Even the desserts. Definitely will come back again hopefully service was just...