Oishii

As for fellow List reviewers, I finally got myself to try Oishii with my wife thanks to a Groupon voucher. And I definitely not regret it was on a voucher!

First, the restaurant indicates that it closes at 11pm. However, I wanted to book for a dinner at 9pm (even if the kitchen closes at 10, it's still plenty of time to order, right?), but was told it is too late, and I should come at 8pm (which was not possible). I did not really like the tone on which I have been told and, to be frank, had I not already paid for the voucher, I would not have bothered booking another day.

Nevertheless, once in, I was rather surprised, since the service was fine (I probably just got luckier than other reviewers). The food, however, was really overpriced, and not really good. I got a tofu teriyaki, and my wife got a ramen. My dish was fine, but not particularly excellent, and the portion was rather small in my opinion. As for the ramen, the pork and the soup were nice, but the noodles were a bunch of instant noodles cut in cubes! Not even properly cooked!

I think this restaurant tries to pretend to be a fashionable gourmet bistro, but doesn't use the quality products that this kind of dishes need, and tries to take advantage of most people's ignorance about Japanese food to charge gourmet price for it.

They just try too hard without putting any proper effort. And by reading other reviews, I think that they don't realise that the whole point of Groupon vouchers is to try and federate a customer base, not putting people off with lesser quality dishes because they don't bring in much money due to the coupon.

I was left very disapointed by this restaurant, and strongly recommend to avoid it. You can have much better Japanese food for cheaper in Edinburgh!

I purchased a Groupon voucher for this establishment and was very excited to try it. I called up the day before to reserve a table. Off we went on our lunch break but once we arrived we couldn’t actually tell if it was open or not, looking at it from the outside. Turns out it was open but when we entered we were first ignored for 5 minutes and then told we didn’t have a reservation. We finally managed to resolve this by pointing at our reservation on their reservation sheet.

The real trouble started once we were seated. The staff was inattentive, unpleasant and right out rude. During the time we were there the waiter also told other customers to leave as there was not enough staff to serve them. When we tried to order the waiter was so rude that my friend made a comment about the lack of customer service. The reply was: “You are nothing to me and this restaurant, you are worth £3.20.”

Needless to say we got up and left!

I wrote to the owner the same day who called me to apologise, assured me she will get this situation sorted and invite us back for a free lunch. This was on the 26th of September – almost four weeks ago!.....

Unfortunately I can’t report on the quality of the food but I can certainly recommend to anyone to avoid this restaurant at all cost!

We visited Oishii in December just before Christmas and while the food was fantastic, we had a very disappointing dining experience.

The restaurant claims it doesn't shut until 10.30pm and we wanted a quick supper after work so turned up just before 9.30pm. We did check with the waitress first if they were still prepared to serve us. She said yes but to be perfectly frank, we would rather have been turned away.

We were the only diners but felt very rushed and it was made quite clear to us that staff just wanted to go home. We were out of the door well before closing time and felt we had forked out £35 to feel uncomfortable and intimidated into leaving as soon as possible.

I contacted the management after our experience and while they were apologetic enough, I wouldn't go again as I don't think the fact that staff were tired and needed to get their buses was a good enough excuse. It still amazes me that so many restaurants in Edinburgh forget that people are paying good money for a meal and, therefore, ought to receive good service in return.

Although we had no intention of returning to Oishii, it would have been good practice to be offered some kind of voucher or money off our next visit by way of apology.

It's a shame as Oishii is the only place in town that services a proper, authentic katsu curry.

I wanted to like this more than I did, but found sushi rice a bit hard and the taste a bit strange which puts me off going back oiishi. So many other better sushi bars in Edinburg.