Restaurant Review: Oza Oza Bistro

Oza Oza Bistro

Ratings

Overall: ★★★★☆
Food: ★★★★★
Environment: ★★★☆☆
Service: ★★★☆☆
Cost: ¥158/person

The food was amazing; it significantly exceeded the expectation set by the restaurant’s
waiters and interior design.

Food

What stood out about the food most was its uniqueness. What does that mean? Take their most famous appetizer—cappuccino mushroom soup—for example. It was served in a petite mug with cappuccino-like foam on the surface of the soup. No, there was no coffee in it, but it certainly tastes different from your average mushroom soup. Not extremely different, but different enough to leave a good impression. It was served with a complimentary egg pudding with a hint of seaweed.

Each of the restaurant's dishes are prepared delicately with unique flavor and served with decorative presentation. The bread was spiraled on thin metal sticks and served with an amazing seaweed butter that reminded me a bit of cream cheese.

I am not usually a fan of risotto due to its frequent blandness, but Oza Oza Bistro’s risotto I loved. Each risotto had some sort of light “kick” to it. We tried two risottos. One had a hint of exotic spice (not the very hot type of spicy) while the other had a hint of the Shanghai salty-sweet flavor to it. The dessert was not outstanding but still very delightful. Overall each dish was pretty gourmet. I was truly impressed.

Environment

The interior design of the delicious restaurant was highly disappointing. One walks in to the restaurant through a narrow isle with twosome tables lined against the walls with the visible kitchen on the other side of the isle. Think about it. Would you want to go on a date where you’re lined against the wall and other customers are constantly walking past the narrow isle you’re situated it? No table cloth, or any sort of cloth on the table. There’s just a rectangular plastic net sheet. Red faux leather chairs and small rectangular plastic tables with weird lighting shining above. The cheaply
designed environment does not interfere with your taste of the food, but let’s just say this isn’t an ideal place for a first date or some other important occasion.

Service

The waiters had good intentions but clearly lacked training. The manager was very helpful, though. The waiters were not familiar with the menu items and seemed very nervous. One waiter paced rapidly back and forth in the isle waiting for us to finish examining the menu. The other waiter stuttered every other sentence and asked us to repeat what we said numerous times. Both rushed to take away our plates once we were finished eating, which would be nice if they didn’t go about it so anxiously. The manager and the chef are great though. The chef is a Japanese that makes excellent Western dishes. I assume he does the plate decorations as well, and those are beautiful. The artistic design of the dishes significantly surpassed that of the restaurant environment.

Cost

The ¥158/person estimate is provided by Dian Ping, China's version of Yelp. Oza Oza Bistro frequently has special discounts and cost-saving offers. Their set dinner courses are approximately ¥250-¥350, but there are often discounts for those as well. FYI, the cappuccino mushroom soup was ¥20. Considering how amazing the food tastes and how the restaurant's negatives don’t directly affect the food, I believe Oza Oza Bistro’s prices are quite favorable.


Emma Li