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| - For starters, I love sushi. It's amazing. So when there's a new sushi place that opens up near by I like to give it a go; and seeing as how it was valentines weekend I decided I would take my wife out to dinner for some sushi. We live near by, so I figured we would go to Otaku and see what the fuss was all about. After all, they have pretty decent reviews so far and it looked pretty promising.
I had the foresight to call ahead because apparently the restaurant was full. I got a reservation for 7:45, showed up ten minutes early and we were seated promptly. The place was packed, the hostess wasn't kidding, they sure were full. It wasn't surprising that it was hard to get a table, because for a decent size restaurant, they have hardly any tables. Probably 70% of the seating is at two giant bars, one is more of a sports type bar with a bartender, and the other is a sushi bar where you can watch the chefs attempt to make sushi (more on that later). The atmosphere of the bar is very nice if a tad to loud. It seems like it can't decide if it wants to be a high end sushi joint, or a sports bar. And the problem is that the restaurant isn't big enough to effectively be both. So you get the dinner seating right next to the sports bar with loud music playing. There is high quality workmanship and very contemporary/modern design elements all around. I shudder to think about how much it cost them to build it, it's beautiful inside. It almost seems like they're trying too hard to be modern however, as they even use IPads for their POS system. Which sounds like a cool idea, but after observing the waitress try to use it for a while I noticed they don't have a cash drawer attached to them, which means they have to ring up the checks, print out a receipt, then walk to wherever the cash drawer is hidden and get the change. They also didn't seem to work with credit cards too well because they were manually typing in a lot of numbers when the cards wouldn't swipe properly.
All of this would be OK if I didn't run into a headache in every other aspect of our first and last visit to Otaku. Our server was Yuko and she did a very poor job. She took our order, brought us some water and ran away. She only returned once to give us refills. She returned really quickly with our tempura appetizer... too quickly in fact, as we learned that she actually stole another tables app... oops. The tempura was pretty good, although it was quite oily. Once we were done with it, we began the wait for our food... and we waited... and we waited... and eventually Yuko came by to tell us that the kitchen is running a bit slow tonight (no shit). That's fine I thought, it happens. Then we saw her socializing with a table full of drunks and wondered if it was actually the kitchen or her that we should worry about. We decided it was her, when we noticed that a table that was seated after us, and ordered after us, got their sushi ten minutes before we did! All this time Yuko was nowhere to be found. In the long run we ended up waiting 30 minutes after we finished our appetizer to get our sushi. We only ordered two rolls: a California and a Vegas roll. The final nail in the coffin is that the Vegas roll was cold when we got it! It had clearly been sitting out for a good 10-15 minutes before it got to our table as it was room temperature and chewy. Beyond the texture, there was absolutely nothing special about it, certainly nothing to justify it's 9 dollar price. The California roll was just as generic as well. I've had better sushi at Teharu in Tempe, and it's a freaking serve yourself conveyor belt.
By this point my wife and I were pissed off, so we told Yuko that we were in a hurry and we needed the check. She then gave us the check and never returned. In the ten minutes between getting the check and us walking out cursing the name Otaku, I saw her busy counting her tips and socializing with her table full of drunk customers, who I'm sure she realized were the only people that would be stupid enough to actually tip her that evening. This place clearly has a lot of kinks to work out, and the lack of stars in this review is all due to Yuko. I don't know if it would be any better with a different waitress, but I don't think i"m going to worry about finding out. There are a ton of choices for mediocre sushi in the valley and I'm past the point of giving places multiple chances to win me over. I'm guessing all the other five star reviews for this restaurant were from people to drunk to notice how bad it actually is.
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