Okami (Doncaster) - Japanese All You Can Eat

Awesome food, friendly staff, clean restaurant, reasonable price, ample parking.
I tried Okami for the first time for lunch last Sunday, and absolutely loved the food. The presentation, freshness and taste was excellent for All You Can Eat style restaurant. Highly recommended.

They recently changed an owner and the food isn't maintained the good quality as before. I'm shock that 99% of their sushi contents are rice! Sashimi and prawn are not fresh. They are doing a $38 buffet for each person but the waitress is with very bad attitude just because we order more food. Even more shock that they refused to provide the big sushi/sashimi plate for us. They said this big plate is only provided for six people! Excuse me? The big sushi/sashimi plate only has around 10 to 12 pieces, which is reasonable for two people! We never had the similar experiences in other Okami before. I would definitely not recommend this restaurant and will report to the Consumer Affairs too.

Worst service i have ever encountered. Waited 50 minutes before drinks came out, and 1 hour for food.and then all that came out was a serve of 4 tempura prawns for a table of 8. We had to complain to the waitress to get the rest of our first order. After an hour and a half they had not brought us all of the food in our first order, and they had not even entered all of the dishes that we had ordered into the system. The table next to us must have been close friends with the management as they were getting plate after plate, platter after platter directly served by the management and all 3 of the wait staff while we were going hungry. They didn't even bother taking another food order or any drink order until the 1 and a half hour mark. Nor did they replenish the water at the table. If I could have given them less than 1 star I would have.

I haven't had a problem at any other Okami but Doncaster was the only one we could get into, now I know why.

Good varieties. Reasonable price. However, came here twice but the staff are unfriendly and rather rude. Reason why I come all the way to Doncaster branch is because the restaurant is bigger. Tried Epping branch before and it was not bad and staff was friendly. Might try Chirnside Park branch next time.

Great value all you can eat Japanese. Don't expect super great quality, although very fair for the price. Food comes out quite slow, but you have 2 hours of ayce. Definitely recommend to visit if you're feeling super hungry.

For the price for the food was not that spectacular. We ordered multiple meat dishes and only 1 arrived.
It seems that they pick and choose what you get to order and only bring out small portions which isn't great for a family of 4.
We spent $180 and not worth it.
Getting the attention of the waitering staff is difficult and the quality of the food is not fantastic. I would say it is ok at the least.

Food is great I went with a big group 103 to be exact puts alot of pressure on the kitchen especially us Polynesians but their presentation and taste awesome as smaller groups you will experience it alot better food will come faster but yeah I rate it 5

Don’t waste your time, Wantirna and Chirnside Park have better service. Even though the food is delicious, the service is horrible and it’s very obvious in the other reviews for this okami.
Been here twice, both times awful.the second time was worse though.
First time my friend and I came, we were ignored most of the time despite putting our hand up, waving at the staff and literally making eye contact and clearly being noticed but our table not attended. It was embarrassing.
The second time, I went with a group of friends for my birthday and one of the waitresses was so bloody rude and had the worst attitude and rolling her eyes. I’m assuming bc the table ordered a lot but it’s an all you can eat…and there was no wastage. We ordered a large amount at a time bc we weren’t sure when we were going to get served again.
Then my friend and I ordered 2 lemon lime and bitters with vodka but one 1 came out so we asked where the other is.the waitress pointed to another person at the table who had her Canadian club in a glass and rudely said “well what’s that then…” and we explained it wasn’t a lemon lime and bitters, it was another persons drink.so we were accused of lying about not getting our order.
When we first ordered food, it all came out in 2 big plates, one plate for 1/2 of the table and the second plate for the 2/2 of the table. As we ordered more, they cut the portions in half and only brought out 1 plate of food for the whole table of 9 when it would only clearly serve half of that. We asked for more as the serving wasn’t enough and the portion was cut in half and we were rudely told to finish eating first.so only half of the table got to eat the plate and the other half of the table had to wait to order and get their food.
Finally, when we ordered dessert we all ordered our ice cream and 1 green tea fish each.the rude waitress who served us earlier literally was tossing them at the end of the table so passive aggressively and then gave us all 1/2 of the fish each when we should of had 1 each. When we asked for it to be fixed, eyes were rolled.
After we got our ice cream, we observed how that same waitress gave the next table with a massive group of people their ice cream.she asked everyone who had each flavour of the ice cream and handed it to them personally. You could see the obvious difference in attitude between our table and the next table. It was disgusting. Everyone felt so unwanted and uncomfortable and I felt even worse as it was my birthday and we just wanted to have a good time.

Came here without any expectations and my god!

Expect fine dining food quality but at a buffet all you can eat price!

You'd be a fool not to go to this place (As I have been my whole life until i discovered this place).

This particular location is 5 stars (I can't vouch for the other branches though)

Definitely come here! Atmosphere is very japanese & so are all the food, they have authentic japanese ingredients.superb restaurant!

Never change your drop your quality, keep it up guys!

Okami Doncaster is the best branch I have ever been! Easy to find a car spot, the restaurant is spacious and pretty-decorated, the food is fast served and the staff there are always friendly. Definitely deserves a five star!

Seems like one of the first Okami restaurants. I wanted to score this place higher but the service was poor. We sat for almost 15 minutes without being approached for any orders. We had to prompt the staff to take orders. It almost felt like they didn’t want to provide service. Even with the orders, some didn’t arrive and the quantities we were given was inaccurate. The beef carpaccio that I ordered was dry and lacking the sauce. All the others was fine just the beef carpaccio that was hard to get wrong went wrong.
It was quite a disappointing experience. I’ve been to many Okami restaurants and this particular restaurant will go to the bottom of my list along with the Footscray venue.

The teriyaki steak wasn't properly cooked, and was just extremely chewy.
The prawns were sweet.
Dessert was served between dirty plates.
The ice cream came in parts, the order wasn't taken down and most likely forgotten.
It was extremely stuffy in the area and the staff was slow, dismissive and generally quite rude. At one point we were waiting 20+ minutes for a salad and some sushi.
One server however went above and beyond towards the end of the serving, providing fast efficient service. Absolutely amazed, he deserves a job with people matching his energy and work ethic or maybe a raise
Okami Doncaster seemed understaffed, as the restaurant wasnt full and yet there wasn't enough waiters. Some tables seemed to get an extensive amount of service while tables like us did not.
At one point a plate was dropped, the waitress that strolled by didn't stop to clean and let one of my party do it for her.
The only good thing was the tequila shots and the lovely server at the end.

I can said 5 stars for the food. HOWEVER, the service really worst. So the buffet should be 2 hours but the guy (the staff) told us that buffet just 1 hour 15 min. He keep checking his watch while watching our table and make us not comfortable, and rush us to finished. Lots of missing food while we clearly told the staff what we ordered.

Will not recommended to come here if you looking for better services, since lots of OKAMI Restaurant in different suburbs.

Not very pleasant service by this place, there are dishes we've ordered, but never received them, but there were tables came later than us got theirs, we asked about it twice they said it was in steamer or making it, "what the?
If you go there, definitely make sure you get your dishes, harass them.

Unfortunately the food aren't so authentic, and nigiri sushi fish is Very very thin. Suggest to arrive early and order at ASAP otherwise it will took longer than your expectations. Insufficient no.of waiters which means needs to wait for a while in order to put through the order.

Try to get in before rush hour PM and order before it gets too crowded, that way you won’t have to spend the majority of time waiting for your food. Food was a solid 4/5, you get what you pay for. Our waiter was quite inexperienced and new so we understood. Dessert was great.

This is the worst dining experience I have ever had. Everything was extremely slow and took more than 2 hours for some of our orders to come out. At the end, we were still missing some of our orders and just gave up. Service is also terrible, staff does not care about you even if you complain. I understand it’s a busy night but maybe you should hire more staff. Not authentic Japanese food either. First time I left a buffet still feeling hungry!

Food was very good until I ordered their Shumai. I can't even describe how bad that Shumai was. Also, there is a time limit of your stay in Okami just like other restaurants/all you can order or eat restaurant, but a lot of your time is already spent in ordering and waiting and waiting and waiting, And then you will be told: "this is your last order before your time is up". Ugh!
No, not going again. Sorry.

Food:
The food is great for photos but if it’s the taste you care about, I recommend trying a different place in the city they have good Japanese restaurants there.

Aesthetic:
Clean and has that Japanese aesthetic with Japanese dolls, a little fountain and those Japanese frames (I’m not sure what they’re called)

Staff:
They are accomidative and do their job well and quickly

Do I recommend? If you’re craving some Japanese food and you’re in the area, sure.
Would I tell you to go out of your way to come here? Not really.

I work in the hospitality industry, so I'm pretty understanding, however from what I experienced tonight I won't be back.
Our orders kept going to the wrong table, we had to keep asking where our food was - not once or twice but three times and even then it wasn't right.
Some staff members were not friendly.
And you'd think after constantly stuffing up, we'd be able to get 2 scoops of icecream, but no that's not allowed.
Not happy Jan won't be back, will stick to our original restaurant of Greensborough, where the service is phenomenal and the atmosphere fantastic.