Oya Restaurant & Lounge

Review by bettygraves on October 17, 2007

Review by kittenjd2b on August 27, 2007

I thought the food was an excellent mix of very rich flavors. The serving size left me feeling full without being over glutenous.

Review by acjq143 on June 27, 2007

First time at this restaurant for a girlfriend's birthday and it was better than I expected. The service, decor, and food were impeccable. They also brought an additional dessert for the guest's birthday.

Price was great for the 3 course special (amazing deal for $29) but the cost of wine/drinks made the total bill quite expensive.

The waiter was friendly and took our pictures for us.

Will definitely go back (just not order as many drinks to keep the cost down)!

Review by KZinDC on August 30, 2006

My party and I went for Oya's extended restaurant week. In general, everyone was pretty satisfied, some (myself included) were even talking about it the next week.
I started with the spicy crunchy shrimp roll, which was solidly good. My boyfriend complimented his heart of romaine salad (and he's not one to comment on his food much). My salmon was tender and juicy, my boyfriend's steak was just right. The vegetarian options left our veg friend full, satisfied, and with leftovers for the next day.
The deserts were great but I was definitely feeling full by the time we got there. I had the banana bread pudding and it was served with a small scoop of coconut ice cream, though it didn't taste much of coconut or banana. I heard great things about the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate desert.
The one item that could have been improved upon was the wine flight that a friend of mine tasted - the first two were very good but the last was syrupy and unfortunate.
In general, a great experience for Restaurant Week, a beautiful atmosphere. Our waiter was very polite and helpful and we didn't feel talked down to at all. We hope to return!

Review by BrainEaters on November 29, 2005

I was excited for my first visit to Oya, though I don’t remember why and I now know that that excitement was in vain. The restaurant is visually appealing, with a chrome lug studded wall in the bar, a hanging curtain of chain and lots of white marble, some of which encased a couple of cool looking fireplaces where the fire danced on white rocks. However the initial happiness with the place was marred by the amount of time we had to wait for our table. We had a 9:00 PM reservation for three and, granted we were about 10 min late, we had to wait until 9:50 to get seated. Shouldn’t having a reservation mean that you don’t have to wait 40 min for a table? When we questioned the hostess about the wait, she explained that it was because the restaurant was “very popular.” Oh, that makes it all OK, we were somewhere very popular and should expect to have to wait! All in all the service was a bit slow except for the one time the waiter asked if we were enjoying our meal, right after it was served, before any of us had a chance to actually take a bite. Had we taken bites and been honest we would have to say the meats that each of had ordered (steak, duck and lamb) were dry and bland. But I’m getting ahead of myself, the mushroom tempura was a flavorless appetizer, the raw tuna in the buckwheat noodle appetizer didn’t taste like raw tuna should, not especially bad, just a day or so beyond fresh. Considering how pleased we were with our starters and mains, we didn’t give them a chance to disappoint with dessert, for that Hagen Das around the corner was a very reliable palate pleaser. Nothing really jumped out from the dessert menu anyway. Back to the service, the lack of attention even extended even to the filling of our our water glasses, at one point one of my dining partners asked for a refill of her water, the (presumably) busboy fairly quickly returned with a pitcher of water and refilled her water, the problem is that he didn’t bother looking to see if anyone else’s glass needed filling, such as mine which was 3/4 empty.

Though the place is very nice to look at, it is a thin veneer of niceness. The tables are covered in a white vinyl (?) padded covering. I’m sure it’s easy to clean, but it feels more like you are eating at the kiddy table at aunt Margaret’s rather than a nice restaurant. The seats are covered in the same fabric making long-term sitting an uncomfortable heat producing challenge. There is loud techno music constantly blaring that would work better at the clubs a few blocks away, making dinner conversation difficult. Separating the dining room from the kitchen is a large rectangular window with water cascading down it, the effect itself is pretty nice, but for the fact that it looks like you are looking at a blurry diner kitchen, with order sheets hanging from a metal rail, a package of kitchen foil on a shelf. It’s no Citronelle. And the restroom, I like fancy restrooms in my fancy restaurants; I make a special effort to go to the restroom when I go out to a nice place to eat just so I can see their restroom. Their restroom was nothing special, no lugged walls or chain curtains. At the sink, there is a box where hand towels are stored and on the other side of the sink there is a wicker basket with an uncertain function, it server as an overflowing waste basket (flowing onto the floor in the women’s I was told), but it is way too small for that to be it’s true purpose. Plus, there is a tall wicker wastebasket on the floor next to the sink, however, it had a lid on it, and it just doesn’t seem right to have to lift a lid off a wastebasket in a restaurant restroom, does it? So, my towel went into, or on top of, the next to the sink wicker basket of unknown function. All in all my whole experience at Oya was pretty negative, bad service, uninspired food, uncomfortable atmosphere.