1 /5 Sian London: The "Owner response" was probably written by Jon as there was no one else present to hear our conversation. The owner response is mostly lies. I dont have a reason to lie in my review, but a "business owner" has plenty of reasons to try to discredit me and make me out to be a bully, when in fact a grown man is anonymously, cyber-bullying a disabled woman.
My review is 100% true. We paid full price, did not ask for or expect any discount & refused free drinks. I would have made a TikTok video if I wanted to go viral & make money. Look at the other 1 star reviews & see similar experiences.
This was OUR experience at Ozoku & your experience may be different. We did speak to several members of staff about our issues and we were not offered a resolution.
TLDR: Try it for yourself but we were really disappointed.
Starting with the positive points, the interior looks nice, most of the food is well presented & the wait staff were polite.
If you have mobility issues and book for food, you may struggle to get to your table. The restaurant is split-level style & the dining area is up a short set of steps with no bannister or handrails. If you contact them in advance they will allow you to eat in the bar area but if you dont contact them in advance, good luck.
There is nowhere to hang your coats, it being winter we were wearing long heavy winter coats and when we put them on the backs of our chairs they were dragging on the floor.
The majority of the servers are quite young and seem inexperienced, they were friendly but not efficient.
After our starters, the used plates & cutlery were left on our table and the table was already quite small. We asked for new/ dinner plates but were never given any. Even when the main dishes were brought to the table, the dirty plates were left in place. None of the food was given to us with serving utensils, I think they expected us to eat off the serving platters using the previous cutlery, but this is unhygienic as we were sharing dishes & not comfortable essentially sharing saliva from our used cutlery. I did ask for serving spoons & eventually was given 2 for 4 dishes.
Our server explained to my friend that the sizzling beef she ordered would be served very hot, steamy and sizzling. My friend was aware of this but the server seemed to think my friend didnt understand and even told her to look at the dish across the room as it was being served to another table. My friend said that was fine but after all that-when her beef arrived it was decidedly unsizzling, not even gently bubbling quietly. The beef wasnt hot and the neither was the lamb. The lamb was a wee bit tough and quite fatty. Each lamb chop was almost £10 at £28.99 for 3, if they were served hot and delicious I wouldnt have been bothered about the price, but they were not. The rice was ok, portions were a bit small considering rice is relatively inexpensive.
The music is very loud, we struggled to make conversation because we couldnt hear each other well. The live DJ was playing some great music but I wonder if a DJ is the best option for dinner service??
For just under £105.00 including service charge, we had a cup of herbal tea, 1 mediocre mocktail, spicy edamame, chicken gyoza, vegetable rice, egg fried rice, "sizzling" beef and lamb chops. If you look at my other reviews, youll see I have no issue paying good money for good food but due to the portion sizes, taste, authenticity and quality we feel that the meal was over-priced.
As we were leaving, we were approached by a man called John who said he was security but I suspect he is (also) an owner/management. John asked how our meal was and I told him the truth. Jon was quite defensive when I described our experience, however, our issues were not resolved at all. Jon expressly asked me not to write details of our full conversation, so Ill respect that. Ill just reiterate that our issues were not dealt with when we were there, despite ample opportunity. We were asked to return another time but why would we when we had such a disappointing experience this time?
