Inoshishi Izakaya in Mendip

Pleasant, semi-authentic decor. Excellent service from a highly attentive, pleasantly quirky waiter. On enquiring aboout the portion sizes we were advised to have 4 large plates. The food was well presented, and tasty. The experience was sharply reminiscent of our time in Japan in that we hadn't realised he meant four dishes per person. We left with lighter pockets and rumbling stomachs to seek sustantial meals in another establishment.

As excited as we were, unfortunately we were left out of pocket for a disappointing experience. The staff were kind, informative and helpful, which made for the only 10/10 for our evening, our booking at 5.30 was not honoured appropriately in that the kitchen was not ready to serve our meals until 6pm, stating the chefs “weren’t quite prepared”. Our starters arrived after our mains.. not a problem but was all a bit humbled and unexplained. We would have found this understandable if this was the procedure explained but we were not informed if so. The food portions named “small” or “large” were only moderately identifiable in size based on the price not quantity. Left the restaurant hungrier than we went in! The dessert was plated terribly and fell off the plate causing mess and inability to eat properly. They will succeed if more of the sought after dishes were not out of stock and if the dishes entitled large replicated their title! Wonderful service non the less and wish this new business nothing but the best with their progress in the industry.

I wanted so bad to love and support this place, but sadly cannot. The one great quality is the staff. They are lovely people. But the food is not great. The menu is limited. When this happens I do expect those handful of items to be good. The Karage chicken is 4 pieces of breaded chicken thigh meat and comes with 2 sauces on the side. One is very salty and the other is just mayo. Not impressed. The sushi special, and the only sushi available, claimed to be cured salmon. 6 small thin slabs of salmon sashimi that truly just tasted like smoked salmon. From the large plate category we had the aubergine. ( I dread to think of the size of the small plates category if this was a large plate!) Nothing exciting about the aubergine; grilled and oddly prepared. Whilst is looks charred on the outside, there are sections on the inside that seemed undercooked. Sake-please read the menu carefully. I ordered the sake and obviously I missed that it was 50ml which is a small sake cup size and was £8.00. That is extortionate. Having spent a reasonable amount of time in Osaka and Tokyo Japan, alongside eating Japanese food on a regular basis, this is not the street food they are reaching for. They've missed the mark. Lastly, the prices are too high for what you get, the portions are too small and you'll be heading to the local take away after you've paid for your 'meal' here. I had high hopes but will not return. I wish them the best of luck.