Ocha Japanese Restaurant

"Ordered it from uber eats cause I'm currently sick. I feel more sick after eating the food. Teriyaki chicken bowl is drenched in teriyaki, can't taste anything else but it and my rice is all soggy. Somehow miso soup is extremely salty."

"Food is the stand out with compliments to the Chef, surprising unique tastes and crunch and flavours in everything we picked (popcorn chicken, prawn balls (5 stars) eggplant, wasabi beef). Green tea white chocolate cocktail was a showstopper, but drinks take a long time between ordering and delivery."

"One of my favourite restaurants in the world, a must visit every time I’m in Australia to enjoy Yasu and Michelle’s amazing food and hospitality. It doesn’t get much better than this. Stunningly fresh seafood, meticulous technique, great wines / sakes / beers, knowledgeable and friendly staff, this list goes on."

"3.0. I was a big fan of the old Ocha in Kew. It was a tiny venue and it was often hard to get a booking there. But, it had real atmosphere including an air of exclusivity. The new Ocha has been in larger premises in Hawthorn for some time and it continues the modern Japanese food tradition of the old venue. There’s plenty to like here. The food is good, sometimes very good, and the bar and table service is terrific. But, I had a couple of issues with our experience here. One, the place is a bit noisy when it’s full. Two, and more troubling, we had to wait an eternity before any food arrived after being seated. More on this shortly. We started with a drink at the bar which was very pleasant. The bar and managerial staff were totally on the ball both with drinks and conversation. A long humour laden discussion over our drinks about the merits of dirty martinis was both entertaining and funny. We enjoyed the banter and then moved to our table. We ordered promptly after sitting down essentially leaving the venue to choose the dishes. But, then we waited and waited and waited. So did other tables around us. The food was just so slow to come out. It was basically a glacial one hour wait. I was just about ready to start eating the cutlery, I was that hungry. I haven’t experienced a wait like this for food for years. To be fair to the restaurant, it was clearly the absolute busiest time of the night. The restaurant was full and clearly lots of people had ordered around the same time. I get that. But, aren’t restaurants meant to anticipate these sorts of things and manage them. As we sat waiting and waiting I wondered why the restaurant couldn’t arrange just one appetiser or small dish to tide us over a bit. That plus actually being advised of a bit of a delay would have helped the situation. Instead, we were left hanging and had to make our own enquiries with the staff about when something might be coming. All in all, it was not well handled and it left us frustrated. Finally a dish and then multiple dishes started to arrive after an hour. Our first was finely sliced calamari. On first tasting, I found the calamari bland and thought it needed seasoning. It didn’t. All it needed was a couple of squeezes of lemon juice from the supplied wedges on the plate and the dish was absolutely transformed. It was very nice. A lovely dish. Next dish was salmon tartare with seaweed. This dish too had beautiful taste and textures. We really enjoyed it. A carpaccio of beef was next. It looked good but we all thought it was a little flat and needed more flavour. The sashimi and sushi combination followed. This was good but certainly short of top draw. There were several nice pieces, the best probably being the unagi nigiri which was delicious. We finished the mains with eggplant with miso which was lovely and tempura crab and beans with a green pepper which was also good. Our dessert was a couple of scoops of green tea and black sesame ice cream. All in all, we enjoyed the food. It’s good but not spectacularly good modern Japanese fare. Our thanks to the staff here who were terrific as suggested earlier. The table and bar service was uniformly good and the banter was a lot of fun particularly from the head barman. He didn’t convince a couple of us about his views about martinis but we enjoyed our conversation with him immensely. (I marked the restaurant down half a mark for the lengthy wait for food. Without that, I would have scored it 3.5)"