Oozora Sake House

BUMMER! Closed… how do I know? Groupon just told me and refunded my $ 10 in two seconds flat. I guess this place tried to utilize Groupon as a last try to save their business and it didn’t work. Kind of sad and unfortunate that I couldn’t use my Groupon in time!

With the dimmed lighting and booth seating, the ambiance is calming. The food is good but not exceptional. I appreciated that the restaurant wasn’t crowded and that we were served complimentary miso soup and edamame. The in-​shell edamame was extremely dry. I’m not sure if this was intentional but as a Japanese person, I have never had such dry edamame before. The miso base appeared to be a westernized version rather than the creamier attributes of traditional Japanese miso. Oozora should consider adding green onion to the soup which would significantly boost the flavor.
The seafood pancake was probably the tastiest item that we ordered. It was a bit salty but it was yummy and of a good size. The tonkatsu curry ramen was so-​so. The tonkatsu was perfect– there was the right proportion of breading to meat and there was no fat or gristle on the meat. Very good! The curry and noodles arrived in a separate dish from the tonkatsu and was pretty blah. The bi bim bap (Korean food in a Japanese restaurant?) was tasty and the presentation was really nice.
When we first arrived, the tea was very hot which was nice because it was so cold outside. As the evening progressed, the tea refills were barely lukewarm. It would be nice if there was consistency in the temperature of hot tea.
The restroom was clean and the water spigot and sink were really nice. Be careful of the toilet. It doesn’t look like there’s much water, but when you flush, the water fills up so much that it seems like the toilet is going to overflow.
The service is ok but not great. The server was polite and refilled our mugs with lukewarm tea but other than that, it was as if she didn’t care that we were there (even though the restaurant was empty except for us and another table). Oozora offers Groupon specials to promote their business but they may want to also consider improving the friendliness factor of their service.

Came here for some grub not too long ago.
I came in expecting something decent, but it just went down hill from entering the door.
I walk in, and was seated at a booth with my friend. The table is too small and not even wide enough to extend over your knees… You need to lean forward significantly to reach the food.
A nice pro, if you call it that, was that their house sake was $ 1 at the time so we order that along with grilled pineapple (which i requested last). I also ordered the seafood pancake as our appetizer, a spicy pork donburi bowl and unagi bowl.
And here we go
Food (items that came out from first to last dish):
1. Grilled pineapple came out first. It was alright… they put condensed milk on top of it which threw off the taste. I specifically asked for this last but it came out first!
2. We get the sake, spicy pork and unagi bowls. Spicy pork bowl was just horrible. It seems like they cooked the pork first until it was dry, tough and flavorless then dumped the «spicy» sauce on it. I ate about half before I stopped and pushed it away. Unagi dish — what unagi? There was barely any of it. 2 – 3 small pieces? Tasted like ugly.
3. Oh here comes the miso soup you usually get before your meal (at other restaurants anyway). Watered down. Please fix.
4. My appetizer… Last. Seafood pancake. Mushy and fall apart terrible. The flavor was very bland and wasn’t enjoyably.
Service:
They give you ONE napkin. Not a nice big one, but the ones you’d fine at a Vietnamese phở restaurant. Took me forever to get a few more.
Bottom line:
I don’t care if they give you 15% off their overpriced food. I wouldn’t want a second helping of disappointment. I won’t go back.

Trubates also led me here, and I quickly discovered I went for the wrong occasion. Oozora is not the place to get a full-​on meal in terms cost-​efficiency (quantity and quality of food doesn’t match up to total bill). Unless you have a really small appetite, expect to spend $ 15-​$ 20 per person to semi-​satiated.
Service: good-​ish. «Good» because the waitress was friendly and refilled our teas multiple times. «-ish» because she failed to tell us the $ 1 sake does not apply to our Trubate coupon before bringing us the sake and giving us the option of either paying the full amount of $ 6 or saving the coupon for another time. $ 6 is not that much I know, but it is compared to $ 1 if you know what I mean.
Ambiance: Loved it because it was rather quiet around 7 pm and the tables are more like informal booths, it’s nice to have your own space.
Food: very average but overpriced if you plan to eat a real meal here because the quantities are small and it definitely takes a lot to get full.
1. chicken wings– these are grilled with just enough flavor and luckily weren’t burnt, comes with 2 skewers each with 2 pieces of chicken wing
2. cherry tomatoes– there were also grilled, 2 skewers each with 3 tomatoes. It’s hard for me to eat a meal without «veggies» so this was it.
3. fried oysters– 5 oysters deep fried, this was quite yummy not because it had seasoning or anything but because it was simply fried. I liked that it was crunchy on the edges, although I wish they had some kind of special sauce to accompany this besides the little slice of lemon that came with it.
4. Seafood pancake– about $ 9, not bad and would recommend for trying. Just as someone else commented, this tasted just like takoyaki (octopus balls). It was thin but did have a lot of squid and some shrimps. Also, the variety of sauces and seasonings they piled on top saved the pancake from falling flat (alone it would be extremely bland).
Would come back for a snack or light drinking ($ 1 sake with any order appetizer is actually a great deal), that’s about it.

15% discount late night!
Decent skewers! And the service was really nice. One of the skewers seemed overcooked and they were happy to re-​do it. But I can see how some reviewers may feel burned. The skewers do tend to veer on the over-​cooked side.
Definitely a nice place to chill on a late night after drinking. Not quite the place to eat dinner though. You probably should just aim to eat the small plates/​skewers; not so much the don’s.

We discovered this restaurant through Trubates and decided to come here for dinner. Overall, I would say that the food is very good and that the service was excellent. However, it is on the pricey side and was only somewhat affordable due to the Trubates. But the prices might be standard for Japanese Izakaya.
Shrimp Tempura — $ 9.95 — comes with 6 pieces of shrimp tempura, it was good, but not anything special
Fried Oysters — $ 6 — 5 very large deep fried oysters. I thought this was great. The oysters were huge, had a rich flavor, and were fried just right so that they had a crisp outside, but moist and juicy inside.
Korean Spare Ribs — $ 7.50 — 6 decently sized pieces of perfectly seasoned Kalbi. Korean bbq is expensive in SF, so while you only get 6 pieces, I thought this was a good portion for the price. The flavor was terrific, although the beef might have been a little undercooked as it was a bit red around the ribs.
Pork Belly Skewer — $ 4 — 2 skewers of small pork belly pieces. This was ok, but not remarkable. I’d pass on it.
Grilled Chicken Skewer — $ 4? — 2 skewers of grilled, glazed chicken. Like the pork skewer, it was also unremarkable. Not as tender as I would have liked. I’d pass on this too.
Seafood Pancake — $ 12.95? — I thought this tasted exactly like takoyaki balls. It contained lots of octopus, bonito flakes, and seaweed. I’ve had one in NYC in the past, and it reminded me of it.
Throughout the meal, the service was prompt. My water was refilled and dishes were removed as soon as they were finished. They were speedy and efficient.

I believe this place is a drinking focused place.
Full bar and mini dishes, it’s a great place to go with your friends at night tryna catch up or just a chill spot. I like the little booths so you can have your privacy.
The food was so-​so, small dishes on things you cant go wrong on. I wouldnt come here if i was hungry trying to eat a meal or else you’ll end up spending a fortune especially if your a fat ass like me
Try it out, not 5 star experience but hey it’s just a kick it spot

This place is DISGUSTING… I think all the meal options are suited to be appetizers. The décor is modern and up to date… but the food, I think, is some kind of attempt to be Japanese/​Korean Fusion – FAIL. I had the Unagi Don, salty and tasted like… a lot of… seaweed and some other over bearing spice. Edamame. how can you mess that up? oh yea, by serving it looking rotten. My boyfriend got the Korean spare ribs with a side of rice… he said it was nothing out of the ordinary. Shrimp tempura was the only tasty thing out of the meal. Glad I got this deal on groupon. cuz theres no way I wouldve paid full price for this meal.
I’d rather eat penis.
I have to end this with… A GAG!

I been here allot times… nice place to hang out…
Food is good & service is the best.
Wish they will have more foods.
Always recommend friends to come here to hang out.
My best spot.

Nah, man. this place is not kicking. Even though it’s $ 1 sake (which taste like poop not that I know what poop taste like) They really get you on the food. The dishes cost about 5 – 10 each and they are mostly small plates. I wouldn’t mind so much if they tasted good.
I don’t think I would come here again.

This is the kind of place that you go to one time and say «I guess we won’t be coming back». I would’ve given them one star but decided to be generous and give them one more for effort, décor and clean washrooms.
I guess in a way I deserved to not have had a good restaurant experience on the rare night off when the final deciding factor to enter this restaurant was that they were having a $ 1 hot sake special with the order of any appetizer.
Food:
Yakitori: If you are looking for skewered yakitori, I suggest that you go to KASUMI. The taste and quality of food at Kasumi is far superior to Oozora.
Ramen: The broth had no taste and the noodles were soggy.
BiBimBop: We had the Kimchee BiBimBop and this was one of the first dishes to come out and I was pleasantly surprised. It was not bad at all. But as you can tell from my review, it went downhill from there.
Alcohol:
Soju: What soju? GF ordered a glass of yogurt soju and I ordered a glass of mango soju? Didn’t taste any soju at all. To top it off, we were charged $ 28 per glass. When I flagged down our guy waiter to inform him that we were charged $ 28 a glass, he goes «I saw that, good catch». WOW!
Hot Sake: At $ 1 a bottle, I’m not going to complain.
Service: Besides the lady that obviously seemed like the owner, both the guy and gal waitstaff we had seemed off and a bit confused. They were nice but it seemed like their mind was somewhere else. At one point, after we pretty much finished all our food, the gal waitress comes up to us and says that our ribs are being cooked now. I asked what ribs? She said that we ordered ribs and it is being cooked now and that she is sorry. Since we all weren’t quite full but decided we weren’t going to order more food that we all didn’t enjoy, we decided to wait for it since she said it is being cooked now. 10 mins goes by and the guy waiter comes and clears our table. We told him that we were told that we still had a dish coming. He said he didn’t think so and will check. We hear them discusses it by the register and the owner informed him that she didn’t see that we have anything else coming. We told her that the gal waitress was the one that told us that we did and we didn’t think we did either.
The owner comes by a bit later to tell us that the gal waitress was mistaken and we didn’t have anything else coming and for the confusion, she would give us a Grilled Marshmallow-​cooked at your own table, which was a nice gesture on her part. However, they put actual charcoal in a small grill to produce the flames.
Left the restaurant with a headache. Not sure if it was from the overall experience or if it was from possibly inhaling CO from the charcoals. Needless to say, the four of us will not be coming back.

I believed my Izakaya experience has been going down, down, down since my first encouter with Ippuku. Perhaps Oozora is only good for sake as it is a «Sake House», and definitely NOT for Izakaya.
The filet mignon was way over cooked and was lack of that distinct beef steak taste. The chicken hearts were cut into very thin pieces, they were literally «glued» to the sticks — I had a real hard time biting them off, and they were over cooked, again. The bacon wrapped asparagus was a complete joke! The so-​called bacon didn’t taste like bacon AT ALL. It was more like a thin slice of cooked pork wrapped around a tiny piece of asparagus. Come on! How could they mess that up? The grilled optopus didn’t have any of the grilled smoky flavor to it, it tasted like boiled.
On the other hand, the sake clams were pretty good — fresh meaty clams cooked in a nicely seasoned broth. The service was decent, but without the yummy dishes, it just wasn’t enough to bring me back. Maybe a sake/​soju only night.

Pretty awesome! The food was really tasty with a wide variety of skewered delectables to choose from. I thought I was going to a sushi place and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a Yakitori den!
I like, well, weird food. I was happy to find chicken hearts, beef tongue, pork belly and such on the menu! Filling up on Yakitori is quite expensive, $ 5.50 for two shrimp, $ 4 for a few piece of (highly delicious) grilled chicken skin. It came to $ 40 to fill the two of us up. But hey, I was expecting sushi, so that was actually under budget!
I neglected to try the $ 1 sake, but, I’ll be back :)
On the Con side, the menu was comically outdated (design wise), the rice for the generous Uni Donburi dish was pretty awful. It was bland and mushy. I mean, it’s just rice so who cares. But then again, it’s just rice and this is a Japanese restaurant, right? Also I’m not a fan of the ‘write what you want down on this piece of paper’ ordering system. It’s kind of impersonal
Really though, great restaurant. Delicious food and excellent service!

I had dinner at Oozora last Friday night with a few friends. A friend of mine had heard of them just opening, so since he wanted to try it out, a group of 6 of us went.
The décor here is nice yet subtle — decorated well and a cool spot to dine at with friends. We ordered a bunch of things here and there but the dishes I remembered trying are the tomatoes, pork belly, asparagus wrapped in bacon, seafood pancake, fried oysters, cold tofu, and bibimbap. The bibimbap here was not good at all, but I won’t complain too much since this isn’t a Korean restaurant.
Some of the Yakatori items were good, and some were okay. I remember enjoying the fried oysters, pork belly, and asparagus/​bacon. Everything else was mediocre, and everything in general could definitely be kicked up a notch with better flavors.
This is still a new restaurant, so I’m sure they can still change/​work on some stuff to make it great. If the food gets better, this place could do well. Another cool thing is their sake specials — $ 1 sake with any appetizer order. And the $ 1 sake wasn’t bad at all. Woohoo!

While a nice change from the «Hot in the Pot» — I am still a bit gun shy at the last few Yakatori houses we’ve been too. The restaurant itself has undergone some nice interior changes while the exterior needs a freshening.
The food, while mostly «on a stick» is good, not great. I’d suggest sticking (no pun intended) with the «known» foods, however, if you feel daring, the chicken hearts are very tasty. Go grilled calamari over fried and must try Ahi Salad

Another place which just doesn’t need to exist. Lousy service, mundane food… It”s like a bunch of kids said «lets start a restaurant» we have some money. Even with free Sake I won’t be back.

This just just opened about 3 weeks ago. My friend found them on Unilocal so we decided to give them a try. The place is pretty cool looking, and the best part is, is that they have a Karaōke room! So you can have good food to accompany your singing talents. I have no such talent but it doesn’t matter this place is a great place to come for the food and to hang out with your friends. They play music in the background but they also have two flat screens here, where you can come can watch the games.
They have a special grand opening deal. If you order an appetizer, you can get a bottle of hot sake for $ 1.00, They also have a check –in offer if you check in through Unilocal.If you check in, you will get 15% off! that’s a really good deal!
We ordered some skewers to share. We got the chicken wings, which i HIGHLY recommend and the pork and chicken skewers. I like the chicken one more than the pork, I felt that the pork one had too much fat in it. We ordered the seafood pancake as our appetizer, and it looked weird when i first saw it. It was really flat and i thought it was going to be thick like the ones the korean restaurants. But i ended up loving this pancake, because it taste exactly like the takoyaki balls! and i love takoyaki! We also ended up getting the Casserole to share. We ordered the mild one, but we felt that it was spicier than what we considered is mild. We still loved it but we weren’t able to finish it. My friends ended up getting a bowl of rice as well. One unagi bowl and another was something else i don’t remember. Overall, the food wasn’t bad here and the service was good. I will definitely come back and try the rest of their items.

Hmm. I am at a loss of words when trying to sum up my feelings about this venue.
True. this location has always been dim; for those who don’t live in the richmond neighborhood, the past 3 businesses that have been located here have never been able to open for long. As many of you may know, oozora sake house is primly located at the exact location of what use to be CYBERHUNT, FIRE.- some kind of hot pot place, and another venue where it seemed so dark inside that no one would know whether or not they were open. unsurprisingly, these businesses were unsuccessful because of the 1) lack of security after 10pm 2) high price, with the most difficult experience of parking nearby (the parking around Oozora are slim to none (averages around ~30minutes of search), plus+ once people get a spot, they will never leave). and 3) dimly lit establishments that make for bad fung shui or at the very least, an unfriendly atmosphere
I can tell you this: Oozora sake house is. a nice place to try, and a possible fun place to bring friends. assuming that sake prices, variety and otherwise, are kept low or if Oozora continues to promote their advertised, 1 $ sake w/​any appetizer, grand-​opening deal.
Upon Unilocal reviews, my girlfriend and I descended upon this place at 8 to chill before a late-​night dinner with my gf’s parents. We decided to try this place because it was new, looked relatively modern, and was not crowded inside. the parking situation, as expected, was difficult even though it was already 8:30pm. and there were about 2 small groups of people eating inside. after we found parking, we walked to the dimly lit Oozora Sake House and went inside.
We were instantly greeted by friendly waitresses and were given the option to sit wherever we wanted. we sat at the innermost corner booth table as we admired the new restaurant that used to be cyberhunt; as we sat there, I reminisced about how I used to come here to get 52 – 8 ratio with the AWP signed, [-Wolfpack-]Tiger on each Headshot and havin everyone clamour about my hacking when I didnt. ehehehe good times.
anyways, we ordered 2 appetizers, and 4 yakitoris. we ordered the KBBQ ribs ($ 7.50), fried oysters ($ 4) appetizers, shitake mushrooms ($ 2), glazed chicken ($ 3), the promotional $ 1 house sake, and a bottle of Sapporo.
KBBQ ribs were good, relatively tender and came with some kim-​chi. I liked it but it was burnt. I dont know whether its a common restaurant practice or simply ignorance to the fact that burned things are carcinogenic, but the ribs were grilled to blackness. not bueno to my system, so I had to rip it off with my jaws of high standards. the fried oysters were good. I dont usually eat oysters because I don’t know much about them, but the oysters here were tasty and I enjoyed it. the shitake mushroom (2 mushroom caps) and the glazed chicken (marinated and grilled chicken yakitori) were exactly as you would imagine them to taste, except with less taste that you’d expect. the waitresses were friendly, a lil tipsy, and attentive. my tea was a lil cold when I got it: P but there’s always room for improvement.
the sake was good and sapporo has been my favorite beer.
In my opinion there are many good things about this restaurant, and though this is only my first time here, I will say that its worth at least a 2^nd visit. Though there is room for improvement, I can tell that the owners CARE about customer happiness, which is a major factor in the 4^th star that I am giving. the restaurant experience is 3 stars, but Oozora gets 1 more for the effort.
I would recommend that they continue to have sake-​associated promotions and happy hour to attract more business.

Girls night out and saw a grand opening sake special for $ 1. Cozy contemporary restaurant, they have this little cube style seating is good for group of people want to have a conversation and drink the same time.
Love the Sake clam and Asparagus Bacon really tasty! Foods are great, services are good!!!

Oozora Sake House! The new Japanese/​Korean restaurant on the block.
Insider tip: This place opens til 1am on Friday and Saturday. This will be a new spot to grab drinks. They are fully stocked on flavored soju (Yogurt, Apple, Grape, Pineapple, Mango and Strawberry) and plenty of Sake!
Currently they have $ 1 sake (Bottle? WHOA! thats a deal) for their grand opening special
First thing I noticed was the décor. It has a cozy contemporary lounge feel to it. I was seated by the waitress immediately as I walked through the door. So the second compliment is for the service, very attentive throughout the meal and also asked how each dish tasted. Always refilled water, and was very prompt with service. You wouldn’t imagine how many new restaurants don’t give good service when they first do a grand opening…
On to the food
Soup– Miso (Compliments of the owner)
Comment– Seaweed, tofu included in the miso. I like!
Appetizer — Pork Belly ($ 4)
Comment– Grilled perfectly, a load of flavor, comes with some spice and ¼ piece of lemon for extra flavoring. Tip: Would recommend to eat with rice as well.
Unagi Don ($ 8)
Comment– Unagi cooked perfectly, laid on top of rice. The rice was a bit sticky but complimented the Unagi. The portion size is decent, but I recommend ordering a couple appetizers.
Overall, a good new experience at a new restaurant. I will be back and I hope to try more of the other items on the menu.