Okidoki by Meiji — Restaurant in Tustin

I've had two decent experiences here and, more recently, one very bad experience, maybe my worst one ever. I have detailed it below. I'll average my rating out to 2 stars for all the times I've been combined.

We arrived at 7:30PM on Dec. 26th. They were understaffed and extremely disorganized. We were the last party waiting outside and I asked if we could be seated; we could see three open tables, one cleaned and two uncleaned. The waiter said it would take a few minutes to set up the table and he would seat us. Okay, fine. He places the menus on the table and sets it with napkins and utensils. And then proceeds to forget about us for ten minutes. We're staring at the clean and set table and two dirty tables, just sitting there for 10 minutes. I had to walk back inside for the waiter to remember us. A sign of things to come.

They ran out of udon noodles by 7PM and did not inform the patrons waiting outside (like us) until we tried to order those dishes. Udon is half their menu and is used in some of their most popular items. Their spicy beef udon was the reason I was coming back. I realize it was the day after Christmas but it was the restaurant's decision to be open that day. They should have done the proper prep work. We were bitterly disappointed but were not dissuaded. We continued to order other items. The ramen is distinctly below average, would not recommend when there are so many good ramen places in Orange County. Grilled squid and side skirt are some of our favorites and, to their credit, were delicious. It would turn out to be the eye of the storm.

At this point, the restaurant is maybe at 70% capacity. Certainly not bustling and full as it was before, service couldn't get any worse, right? Challenge accepted by Oki Doki, they would outdo themselves.

It took an hour to come out with hot pot which didn't even come out hot, all ingredients and broth were cold. There was raw chicken. Every hot pot I've ever had at least comes out lukewarm. They didn't even have all the ingredients that was supposed to come with the hot pot, we had to substitute for their missing items. Wow. It came out so late that only one person in our party was left eating.

The table next to us didn't even receive their food for an hour. The waiter gave the excuse that the order was inputted into the computer but never sent to the kitchen. Uh, what? Why isn't he checking with the kitchen constantly for his patrons' orders? He's probably serving four tables total at this point in the evening. Severe lack of communication between the floor and the kitchen. To add insult to injury, that table also received their check before they even got their food. Half an hour before closing time. The older female waitress told them "It's okay, take your time!" Uh, you're asking them to pay before they even have their food? The unprofessionalism was astounding.

At the end of our nightmare of an evening, management thought a free dessert would assuage our anger and disappointment. No offer to comp a single item. We had lost our appetite an hour ago and could not stomach even free dessert. We just wanted our check and to be out of there ASAP. That didn't happen since it took them another ten minutes for the check.

Almost everything that could have went wrong did go wrong. It makes me very sad to post this because I truly love the food at Oki Doki and would have returned at least monthly for the grilled squid, side skirt, and spicy beef udon alone. This experience will leave a bad taste in all our mouths. This review is more for the eyes of the restaurant than for other customers. I hope they see this and realize their mistakes so they can improve and other patrons will have a better time...

One of my resolutions for this year was to get more social and less media. I've been in the usual rut of going to the same places, but wanted to get out of my comfort zone to explore new places. This has been on the list to try and so happy we found our way in.

Girl's night out brought us gift exchanges over shared oden, chu-hai cocktails and lots of stories as I re-connected with my gal pals. We decided on coming here over other places because they offered Yelp wait list, which we hopped on 15 minutes after they opened. There was already a decent list and we were 9th in line.

We arrived around 6pm to check in and waited about 10-15 minutes before we were seated. As we looked at the menu, chu hai with fresh squeeze citrus and oden caught our attention. So, first order of business was to tally up our selections and we got 2 grapefruit and 1 orange chi-hai. Super refreshing!

The oden is limited with one of them items not available, but otherwise, everything was great! We got 3 daikon, acorn jelly, egg and chikuwa (fish cake). The hot broth combined with the delicate selections warmed us up to the rest of the menu.

I ended up settling on an Eel & Avocado roll & Salmon Sushi. My friends got the Nabeyaki and Sashimi Bento box. We also got an order of some starter my friend raves about. It complemented our drinks with a mix of lightly seasoned root vegetables.

Unlike your typical izakaya where you can hang around for a bit, the popularity of place gathers a wait list, so if you're done and paid, they may kindly ask you to leave for other patrons. We finished up our drinks and then made our way out, which ended up taking us to a cafe nearby where the night carried on with more stories. Overall, dinner was very filling and heart was full.

I would definitely like to try them again during lunch since they had a lot of specials....

My daughter wanted udon for her birthday and we decided to order from this place since they are near our place and we have had food from here once before. The food is OK. Not somewhere you make a special trip for.. but decent. The problem with this place is their staff's obvious inability to manage busy times. Spent about 100 on a few bowls and some sushi rolls. The estimated prep time was 50 minutes. I put in the order through postmates and my wife went to pick it up a few minutes after postmate said the order was ready. When she arrived, the receptionist insisted that there was no order at all and refused to look at the order confirmation number I gave my wife. Finally someone from the back realized it was a postmate order... but it was not yet ready... they made her wait about 20 more minutes. My wife, was obviously concerned that the order was rushed, so she wanted to double check the order. My guess is that their receptionist was feeling very frazzled because she outright refused double check the order...insisting everything was there. Long story short the receptionist was a complete jerk to my wife because she thought she was a postmate driver. My wife is Korean so her face doesn't match her last name ... still even if she was a driver... that doesn't excuse that employees behavior. In any case. I was very disappointed with this places service. If you are in the area, you fancy a bowl of udon and its not near lunch or dinner... perfectly decent place to get some food. But don't make a special trip for this place, and know that they treat different people differently depending on their...