Onigilly Japanese Kitchen - Palo Alto — Restaurant in Palo Alto

In one word: terrible.

I admire what Onigilly is trying to do but, at best, this is a gross misrepresentation of what onigiri should be.

They use brown rice, which is distracting on the taste buds and all sorts of wrong for texture. For a dish that is primarily a celebration of rice, this is inappropriate. While I've seen some brown rice used in onigiri in Japan, this is absolutely atypical, and only accounts for one or two items on an entire menu. Their "onigiri" is two triangles of rice around some filling. It's a triangle rice sandwich, really; not a filled rice ball. The employees don't even form the rice's shape. The fillings are mediocre at best. Some were so sauce-heavy that they were overpowering / mask the main ingredient (e.g. protein). This was outlandishly expensive; it cost us $40 for two people. Even very nice onigiri shops in Japan come in at a quarter of that. There's no reason for it to be this expensive in terms of ingredient cost - especially considering how little work goes into it. The pickled radish is sliced so thinly that customers are robbed of the crisp bite they should be getting.

Ultimately, Onigilly comes off as a very expensive fast food chain with a mass-produced feel. It's clearly aimed at maximizing profit, which might be good for business, but I can make much better onigiri at home with $4 worth of ingredients.

There's nothing that would bring me back in when it's so easy to DIY. If you love onigiri, you're better off sticking with mass-produced Japanese market onigiri and save yourself the...

This is my first ever review in Google and it’s for a reason. I placed an order for pickup but they never got it, I called and they still couldn’t find it. I didn’t see a place to cancel it, so I had to go all the way there to show them the confirmation I had. After that they were fast to give me the food, so that got one star. As for the food: I got the three piece bento box. It’s economical for the amount of food and the area, BUT the tuna used was canned, the BEEF used was ALSO canned. I mean, it tasted like dog food. The eggplant one was okay, I guess? The chicken karaage didn’t taste the best at all, the edamame was okay, and the pickled radish was old, thin, and dry. The best part was the small pieces of sweet egg, but I meant come on. Even if somewhat economical ($17) they used CANNED meats, and it was definitely not worth it to me as I couldn’t eat almost any of it. I was craving a different option for Asian food, and this didn’t taste like it at all. So...

I've been wanting to try this for awhile and I'm glad I did finally. I ordered the 2 onigiri combo with karaage. It also came with edamame. The two rice balls I had are unagi (eel) and snow crab. I enjoyed both rice balls but the karaage is so so. The chicken is not bad but I'll probably skip it next time. It's good to have some edamame in the combo. I see some people complain about the price and I understand that onigiri are basically convenient store food in Asia but unfortunately that's true pretty much in the US where you get crappier food with higher price compared to Asia so I don't think it's fair to say it's the fault of this one restaurant. The place itself is bigger than you'd expect from the entrance and fairly clean. The service is alright and I did have to wait a bit before they gave me my pickup but not enough to say it's bad service because I'm sure they are busy by looking at the huge number of orders they already prepped before...