Ozeki - Ventura

We had a late night craving of sushi and this place was still open, THAT I liked much, food was well seasoned and well at that time not too busy , gave it 4 star for service only because there was 1 lady only with r tables used that night , but other than that so far so good , I'll be going back sometimeFood: 5/5

We went there last night. Quiet place. People there are friendly, including the customers! Food was excellent. They served the best baked green muscles we've had in a bit. We ordered the chef's specials. Each one was sooooo tasty! Definitely going back!

I love supporting smaller businesses and always make sure to write a review (particularly on Yelp) when I love a restaurant. One of my favorite cuisines is sushi and I have frequented the many sushi restaurants in Ventura. However, I do also need to leave a review when a restaurant disappoints so sorely, there 's simply no way around it.My boyfriend and I came in an hour before Ozeki closed on a Thursday night. It was dead empty since it was 10 pm. We alerted the woman who served us, who was clearly one of the owners, that we were just here for a snack since we both had upset stomachs but still needed to refuel after climbing. So we ordered a house salad, garlic edamame, chicken salad, miso soup, and salmon cut roll.There was a resounding theme with each food item we received: teeny, tiny, mini portions and no effort put into making each item whatsoever. The house salad came in a dainty miso soup bowl and was cloyingly sweet. It took me about 4 bites to finish the salad because it was that small. The garlic edamame also came in the tiniest pile. We had to ration out how much we ate because the portion was absolutely minuscule. It was also just too buttery and salty. $7 for a handful of soybeans that aren 't even tasty? Ookkk.We then received my bf 's chicken salad and miso soup and we both laughed and asked each other exactly the same thing: Is this a meal for ants? His miso soup came in an even smaller bowl than the salad came in and took about 3 sips to finish. $1 per sip--that 's a pricey miso soup. And his chicken salad was just so sad: a small bit of spring mix with what appeared to be less than 1oz of chicken cut up into tiny slivers. I ordered the salmon cut roll last minute and it was also the saddest salmon roll I had ever seen; literally, just salmon wrapped with rice and nori. No avocado, not cucumber. The rice didn 't even taste like sushi rice.Oh, my goodness, I just need to ask: how can the owners call this a Japanese restaurant? It 's almost like they had no cooking background, took a look at a sushi menu, and thought Hey, let 's try that, and were only able to pull off butchering even the simplest of their menu items. Ai yai. The owners clearly don 't care what their food looks like and tastes like. It almost felt like cafeteria food where each diner gets the smallest, passable rationing.Prior to ordering and receiving our food, I had been intrigued by all of Ozeki 's delicious-looking rolls when perusing their menu and asked my bf if we could come back here at a future date to try them out. However, after seeing that the owners skimp out and didn 't do justice on even the most simple of ingredients, let alone give a decent portion for the price, I am not entrusting them to do justice with more expensive ingredients.I would highly suggest staying away from here and instead trying Koba Sushi (2026 E Main St) or Banzai Marina in downtown Ventura if you want a high-quality sushi experience in this town. Even if you order a basic cut roll from Koba, you get FAT pieces of fish... and the chef also puts in avocado and cucumber (which are the basic other ingredients in a cut roll).Bye Ozeki, byeeee.

Horrible Quality. NO quality at ALL. The rolls to go now are 6-7 Inches long. Im serious. RUN. BAD. BAD. BAD. 34.00 for 3 rolls 1 of them was wrong ordered). So. Plain fish inside of rice. 34.00 dollars PLEASE. You will be bankrupt in no time, mr. proprietor. Scum you are.

Couldn't get to my regular sushi place in time so I went to this place with high hopes because of the reviews and since it's the closest sushi place from where I live. Prices were waaaaay higher than I expected but too late not ordered two deep fried California rolls a Vegas and a catapillar rolls and a soup so right away no cucumber on California rolls. Not only that but they weren't even deep fried in tempura. Keep in mind they didn't forget to charge me the difference. The catapillar roll was soggy for some reason and the salmon on the Vegas role was terrible and not fresh. Also no ginger and only a small dab of wasabi for all of it. To top it off I asked for bottle of saki only to find out they charged me $24 without asking which bottle I wanted. When they brought it definitely wasn't whT I had in mind so I asked for something different more to my liking they gladly switched it out but they refused to refund the difference. When I mentioned that there was one called he kept insisting was that no the price was the same even though it was clearly different on the media and to prevent me from asking the questions they just kept saying goodbye you can leave good night. A really huge bummer because again it's really close to where I live and they're open late so that would've been a godsend but the sushi was just terrible, weird, and incorrect. I sort of wanted to call and ask for them to try and make it again correctly but it was so bad I just call it a night Which was especially disappointing because it was supposed to be an at home date night. Not saying they never make good food, but can't recommend based off my experience.