Oishi Not!

Today's rambling would be a rambling based on my not so experience from dining at a well known group of japanese restaurant called Oishi.





Oishi is a popular group of japanese restaurant which has marketed itself into a number of different brands as follows:

Oishi - The main flagbearer is a japanese food buffet restaurant offering a wide variety of food
Oishi Express - A scaled down version of Oishi, this brand is cheaper as it offers fewer buffet items, moderately priced for your everyday family
Oishi Sabushi - In this brand, customers eat a buffet variation of the popular sabu sabu (similar to the Thai style sukiyaki) and has some scaled down side dishes.
Oishi Ramen - A fastfood outlet for selling ramen dishes at a economic price.

If you looked at the list above, you can notice that Oishi has done a great job in marketing their products by segmenting the market between different income groups in a distinct way allowing many different franchises to be created with reasonable success. During the early days of the Oishi franchise, everyone was inviting me to eat at their restaurant, and that is where I would like to start today's rambling.

The first time I stepped into an Oishi restaurant was when I was forced by a group of my friends to join them off for dinner. Though reluctant to spend a hefty sum on a japanese buffet as I don't eat sushi, I agreed to follow my friends along just for old times sake. During my time there, I just wanted to say I was rather unimpressed by the lineup of food. Most of the food is typical or bland tasting. The variety may be huge, but I was rather taken back by the horrible table manners of some of the other patrons. All in all, I just wanted to say the buffet was adequate, though I didn't enjoyed it that much.

A few weeks later, one of my other friend who went to Oishi came to vent his frustration with me. He claimed that he saw a hidden camera at the food counter in Oishi. Though I haven't got the chance to go back to double check it, the thought that high paying patrons should be subjected to eavesdropping just because they are afraid of us packing food back home is a big big let down. Without much thought I promised never to step in another Oishi again.

I kept my promise for a number of months, until I was cornered again at a local department store. After huge deliberation, our group of friends decided to try Oishi Sabushi. Though relunctant to eat at Oishi, I noticed that the price range here is alot cheaper than the Oishi restaurant which allowed tempted me to allow Oishi another try. I didn't particularly find anything interesting in Sabushi, though the pricing is rather adequate. It was only at the end of the buffet when I ordered my favorite snack - Zenzai(?) red beans with mochi - that is when my woes with Oishi return. What I got was essentially red bean soup (hardly any red beans) and a number rock hard piece of grilled rice. That bowl of zenzai was a complete let down, and after finishing that dish, I coined the term - Spirit of the Red Bean for the dish as I gave the dish a wai. I promised again, never to step in another Oishi.

Forward another year, I was stuck in a department store with my little bro and a friend, and it was raining pretty hard in the afternoon. All of the people in our clique agreed Oishi was crab, but since we had nothing to do for hours, we decided to go to the only buffet in the department store - which was Oishi Express. Since it was priced less than the Oishi which we didn't liked to much, we still were willing to give it a try. Just a weeks ago before this day, there was a story about an aide of an MP that got badly burnt in an Oishi Express shop, so naturally our curiousity only served as incentive to try out Oishi Express to see how in the world can someone burnt themselves badly by eating a sabu sabu. During the first half hour of the buffet, things were nice in Oishi Express. The problem started when we started to eat our main dishes. Most of the main dishes were bland or either awful.

The highlight of our evening to forget was highlighted by the Sabu sabu dish. We were planning to get a sabu sabu dish (the same dish that got the aide of the MP burnt), and we proceeded to the counter to get the dish. However when we were about to pick the pot, the staff informed us that we cannot operate this dish by ourselves, and they were going to serve us the dish and asked us to select what we want in the sabu sabu. After some deliberation, we pointed at a number of meat dishes and vegatables and went back to our table. After a brief wait, the waitress got us the sabu sabu dish and then left promptly. To our surprise, we saw all the meat and vegetables were dumped in the pot - and to compound things, the water wasn't even boiling. If you have cooked food before, you will know that if raw meat is dropped in unboiled water, it lets off a strange aftertaste. To make mattters worse, the only thing that was heating the dish was this alcohol based candle burning underneath the pot. We were waiting for 10 minutes, and then the fire went out before the water was boiling. Wonderful, now we had to ask them to replace the candle and wait for it to boil again. So after waiting half an hour for a stupid sabu sabu, the taste verdict of all the three tasters were damning - 2 thumbs down - awful!

To cap things off, we decided to have our zenzai again. Once again, I made another wai at the Spirit of the Red Bean. To sum it all up, it was another awful dining experience except the side dishes.

If you have been reading this rambling to this moment, yes, you would not be surprised to hear that I promised myself not to eat at another Oishi restaurant again. I kept my promise for another year, and until I was forced to make a choice between two restaurants when I was supposed to treat my nephew. The first was a spagetthi shop and the second was Oishi Ramen. It turned out that my choice, the spagetthi shop was closed, and I was forced to go to another Oishi shop - this time the last in the franchise called Oishi Ramen. In this sitting, I was adamant that the food will suck as the price is priced in the low range. I wasn't disappointed. It really sucked. Let me talk about two dishes. The first dish that I ordered was curry ramen. When I got my dish, I just have to say I was completely aghasted at the taste and appearance. If you have eaten real curry ramen, you would know that the curry must be normal curry sauce, but diluted so that it could eaten as a soup. In Oishi ramen, what they did was to make ramen from their old brooth, and pour some curry on top, thinking about it - at least they could have stirred the curry and the soup together. The taste was rather bad. What I noticed is that the curry in Oishi Ramen seems to be rather artificial. After tasting the carrots and the potatoes, the vegetables seem rather flaky, which is a attribute of preprocessed food. This flaky taste also extended to the pork - which doubles my hunch that food in Oishi Ramen - like curry was preprocessed by a food factory and not made in the shop.

The second dish that I got was a Yakisoba dish. Though intially it was adequate in taste(better than Sky Lark), after reaching the bottom of the dish, I found that the yakisoba was completely drenched in oil! Its a basic cooking knowledge that it is vital to drain excess oil from dishes. Somehow the shop didn't do that, and added to my doubt about the quality of food.

To conclude things off, after tasting food at every Oishi Franchise,here is my verdict for Oishi. Oishi is excellent in Marketing, but horrible in Food Quality. Its just perflexing to see that so many people partronize Oishi on a daily basis, but I guess at times its another excellent case study of how marketing is more important than product. Sad indeed!