Seison Restaurant

Save your money and eat somewhere else. We went here for Oakland’s restaurant week. The caesar salad was knife cut lettuce and bottled dressing. No crutons, no parmesan, no fresh pepper. Dorm food. The tomatoes in the other starter were hard and tasteless. The entrée garlic shrimp with rice and vegetables was uninspired and arrived cold. The warm peach cobbler was made with canned peaches. The service is rushed and poor. Plates were cleared while people were still eating even though the place was empty. The server assured us the tomatoes in the salad would be very delicious. Not. When we asked her to turn down the blaring music she said ‘okay but the other girl will just turn it up again.’ Try to avoid the dirty restroom — the door around the handle was filthy. But if you have to use it be sure not to use the handrail on the stairs which is sticky and grimy. A couple of hundred dollars later our party of five was very disappointed.

Irene was our waitress and she was amazing! Always had a full cup of water and food came out in a reasonable amount of time. The rib eye was the best dish! Huge piece for $ 18! Will definitely come again!

So freaking amazing! The garlicky fried chicken is so amazing! The chef and staff are great and the collard greens taste like they are straight from the Southern. Best food in Oakland!

decided to give this place a try during Restaurant week Friday January 16^th… we made an early reservation and were only the second table so the waiter was able to take our order in a fairly timely fashion. the food was okay (we had the cilandro pesto pasta with chicken and steak both were slightly over cooked) and the service was a bit slow (about 45 minutes to receive entre but we were not in any hurry) and the waiter was very friendly… another table had to request their food to go because they waited about an hour when it was finally ready. would probably not visit again.

Looking at some of the prior negative reviews from a couple years ago made me hesitant to try this place but I did anyway. They have a revised menu and a great chef that has new. The food was absolutely fabulous! The ribeye steak and the salt and pepper prawns are to die for. I recommend this place to you all to try again…

What to say… I took My other there on his birthday. I choose this place because, if you have read my other posts, my husband is a «coconut shrimp» FANATIC. I saw on the
site that they had it! They also had, on the menu, paella, (one of my favorites).
We went on his birthday, Thursday early, very easily found parking on the street, went in… We were the only ones in the place. In fact, I thought that it wasn’t open yet, but, someone came in from the hotel lobby and said, «Yes. Sit where you want.»
Irene, the bartender/​wait person came in and started the evening.
The drinks we ordered, were EXCELLENT, STAR #1 (more to be said on this matter.)
The menus were given. SHOCK! The menu was totally different from what I saw online! No more paella! No more coconut shrimp! No more crème brûlée! I asked Irene, and she said that
had not changed the old menu. So after looking at the revised menu, we made our selections. Bruce choose the fried shrimp appetizer, caesar salad and rib-​eye steak dinner, I choose the cheese/​fruit platter, caesar salad, and garlic fried chicken. We expected this to be «not so great» an evening.
But then… Irene came out and said that the chef would make the coconut shrimp for Bruce… (they were having a party the next day and had all the ingredients for them) STAR #2
Appetizers and salad came… they were large and delicious, especially the shrimp, and cheese/​fruit platter. It was one of the best selections of fruit infused cheeses I have ever had! Dinner was also superb! My husband was very happy with the rib-​eye steak, and I thoroughly enjoyed the huge portions of chicken, mashed potatoes, greens,(which were even better than what I make…(being from Louisiana no less) and wedge of savory cornbread. STAR #3
Finally dessert… Since there was no crème brûlée, we ordered a lemon pound cake with whipped cream… and STAR #4? Irene showed us she was not just a waitperson/​bartender. she was a mixologist! She made us one of her original creations to top off the night. DELICIOUSLY strong and yet delicate!
We thought that it was NOT going to be a birthday meal to remember… We were wrong. We WILL return again, and soon
Thank you Seison’s chef… Thank you Irene, for this great experience. …(maybe it should be the 5^th. star, no?)

WHOA — This place fell off a cliff on us! We arrived late 2013 to find the menu had COMPLETELY changed. Gone are the lovely paella, the magnificent scallops. In its place is a simplistic, basic grill menu. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that everything was so poorly executed… almost to the point of being inedible.
The fried fish nuggets and fried calamari were all dough, and tasteless dough at that. The Caesar salad came with a vinaigrette — meaning it wasn’t a Caesar at all. The halibut, rib-​eye and pork chop were all dry, tough, and overcooked. The mashed potatoes were oversalted.
The best thing about the meal was the three skinny spears of roasted asparagus on top of each meat. Now that’s just… sad.
Seison has lost us as customers, and we’ve lost one of the few value restaurants we liked. We’re not overly price-​sensitive, but it was fun to discover the few hidden gems that Seison once offered. But that chef has clearly left, and the new one is incompetent.

Went on a quiet weekday evening. Managed to get street parking close by the restaurant. Seison is located in the restored Washington Inn hotel in Old Oakland. It’s a very nice restaurant inside the hotel right on the corner of Washington and Tenth. A modern look inside an older, restored hotel.
Service was excellent. We started with the spring rolls which were fried and different. They were OK. The fried chicken was cooked perfectly, but it was a bit salty for my tastes. No corn bread tonight, so it came with collard greens and mashed potatoes. The rib eye steak with balsamic reduction was excellent — one of the best steaks I’ve had in awhile. The mushrooms and string beans were spicy and the dish also came with the mash. The bread pudding was just OK. Everything pretty reasonably priced.
Seison could be a very good restaurant and I would come back here again. The only negatives are that the neighborhood isn’t the best (it’s just OK) and the street parking is tough. Also, I called to make a reservation and got an answering machine. I left a message but didn’t get a call back.
Almost forgot to mention the David Bowie hits as background music!

I went here with a $ 25 groupon for an appetizer and 2 entrees. I should have known when the waitress brought the bread out, this place was no good. The bread was the kind of white tissue bread usually served at places like Church’s chicken. Apparently several of the items on the menu were not available. The spring rolls were not bad, but nothing great and the sauce was especially sticky like it had too much honey. We ordered shrimp Alfredo but the shrimp had an odor that seemed to indicate it wasn’t the freshest. We sent it back for the chicken Alfredo, and that seemed a bit better. My lasagna was edible, just barely, but extremely bland. I normally love lasagna but I didn’t finish.
We were the *only* people in the restaurant for an hour which was pretty spooky. Probably just a matter of time before it shuts down.

If this place was ever open as published, they might be able to earn more stars. As it is, we have attempted to eat here 3 times. As it is, we will not be trying again, because we met one of the kitchen stag as we attempted to enter and he was smoking, in the door way…
Good luck seison.

This honestly ranks as one of the WORST FOOD I’ve ever had. I can’t even wrap my head around how you can mess the food up (the «salmon» in particular) THAT bad. I mean, I can’t even find the words to explain it. Everything just tasted soo… OLD. Except the bread! The bread at the beginning of the meal was the best part. The butter was cold so it was a good thing the bread was hot. The livingsocial coupon we used didn’t disclose you’d only be given a limited menu to choose from, not their regular menu, though I’m pretty sure that’s not much of an upgrade anyway.
The waitress was nice though. I think she must know how bad the food is (or maybe she saw my facial expressions) cuz she came back to the table a few times but it was like she was afraid to ask how we liked the food. We rejected dessert and she just brought us some cake from a party that was happening at the hotel.

Tragically overrated and deserves to close down before it serves its next appetizer.
Here’s the brief story of our Friday night experience at Seison.
Our evening began ominously with twenty minutes of arguing with the waitress and the manager over our Living Social Coupon. The coupon clearly stated it was an appetizer, two glasses of wine and two entrees for $ 25. They tried to tell us we had to order off a very limited Prix Fixe menu. We stood our ground. They eventually capitulated after I pointed out to them we are locals and this was not a great way to encourage return business. Had I paid full price for this meal, the evening would have been an even greater disaster.
We ordered. Then waited. Waited some more. Twenty minutes later we received some bread and cold slabs of butter still in their foil packaging. I could have been at Denny’s. By now we’re 45 minutes into our visit and all we have is bread and ice-​cold butter. Had I know then that the bread would have been the most satisfying aspect of the meal, I would have taken my time to savor it.
So to the appetizers.
Tri-​tip crostini: it was cold, sliced beef with a drizzle of horseradish. Did not look like any tri-​tip I’ve tasted. No charred, BBQ flavor you expect.
Spring Rolls: tasted like they’d been resurrected from a PF Chang’s dumpster. Obviously frozen, served on a salad bereft of any dressing with a dipping sauce that was so peppery both my wife and I coughed at the taste. Things can only get better I thought. How wrong can one diner be?
The entrees.
An adventure in bad service and cack-​handed cooking techniques.
My wife ordered the Pork Chop. It took the waitress 15 minutes to then relay the message that they were out of Pork Chops (this is 6:45 in the evening, with only 3 other tables occupied). Considering the indignities our chef was about to perform our steaks, I can only surmise the chops may have made a break for freedom.
We both ordered the rib eye steak with fingerling potatoes and asparagus.
I pity the poor cow that had to die to create this miserable, depressing slab of meat.
I asked for medium rare– it came out well done, as did my wife’s.
Despite being over-​cooked it was also barely warm– a conundrum that had me guessing that it must have been sitting out for quite a while, maybe dreading it’s final curtain call at our table. Once it arrived, it tasted as woeful as it looked. Steak and Eggs at any roadside diner would have been an improvement on this.
Inexplicably the fingerling potatoes had been replaced with a mash of sorts. I say of sorts as resembled lump of gruel peppered with potato skin, and had about as much taste as eating a sock. In fact, I probably have socks that would taste better boiled than these sack of spuds.
At this point we were so tired of the arguing and complaining, not to mention hungry, that we ate what we could. When the waitress asked us if everything was OK, it was with a definite tone of trepidation in her voice. We let her know the truth. It was only fair. We weren’t loud or obnoxious, we just told her very calmly our issues. She looked relieved and told us she’d only been there 2 days and agreed with us. Great, even the wait staff hate the food!
Overall, if there was a less that one star rating, I wouldn’t hesitate, and even with 1 star I feel as if I’m being overly generous.
Downtown Oakland is turning into a vibrant, vital pulse in the community. Restaurants like this have no place touting their wares here. It brings the overall quality level down for everyone else.
Time to buck up or shut down, Seison. Maybe get Gordon Ramsey in there to kick your ass.
Seison Sucks. Period.

Had it not been for Restaurant week and a friends suggestion I never would’ve gone to this place.
The calamari was just about the best thing I ate here. The crab cakes were bland and cold. The steak was horrible as well. Oh the other good thing was the drink I had a peach long island, nevermind it took 20min to get, but it was good!
Hate to say it but, I don’t see them being in business too much longer…

Seduced by what the restaurant’s website described as its sample menu, we jumped at the chance to try it out, using a Groupon discount.
The atmosphere was simple and elegant, so we thought we’re in for a treat. But we were the only ones there. So that should have been a sign of things to come.
Ordered crab cakes that were so tasteless… they may have been packaged and frozen.
The fish was so overcooked.
And the steak was served cold. The menu said it would be served with asparagus, but they substituted soggy green beans. Potatoes au gratin? Ha! It looked and tasted like instant mashed potato. I couldn’t eat the steak which was not only tough, it was flavorless — had it wrapped up (this time, a doggy bag means exactly that — this is a treat for our dogs)
SO DISAPPOINTED!
We went to Karl’s Jr for a hamburger that tasted infinitely better than what we had at Seison.

Went here for Restaurant Week and ordered from the prix fixe menu. Crab cakes were a joke, nothing to reflect on the presentation/​style of this restaurant, need to step up the crab cake game if you call yourself fine dining. Fried calamari was very plain — no seasonings or flavor, a let down.
Prime rib was not bad but the house sauce was weak, I prefer slightly tangy not sweet. Garnishing or peppers would even help, it was pretty basic.
Louisiana Bread Pudding was good, kind of reminded me of a funnel cake. Chocolate Malten Cake was melty and rich. To sum it up, if you’re gonna go here I would just suggest drinks and dessert, nothing more.
Service was nonexistent. (Plus they don’t take away plates…)

I doubt that I would have stopped here for dinner if I had not looked at their Oakland Restaurant Week menu. The two classic offerings sounded good, and I was not disappointed.
The first course choices were calamari or crab cakes. I opted for the crab cakes. They were nicely done with real crab and very little, if any, filler. Snooky went with the calamari. There weren’t any tentacles on the plate, our favorite, they were tasty. We both had the rib eye steak bordelaise, potato gratin, and green beans. My rare steak was rare. His medium well steak looked rare to me. I really enjoyed the potatoes, perhaps even more than the steak. We topped of the meal with deserts. The special also included a glass of wine.
The contemporary dining room is in the corner of the vintage 1913 Washington hotel. The bar and lounge is in the lobby of the hotel. Oh, the bathrooms are downstairs, in what I think is the basement.
I sort of felt bad for our server: She was waiting on the tables, greeting guest, and fixing drinks at the bar in the other room. She also had to get the food, which is prepared in the basement kitchen, off the dumbwaiter. She handled all these duties well. We were early and did not have much of a wait. I don’t think the people after us were as lucky. I doubt that Seison expected to have as many diners as they did.
The food was good. The special pre fixe dinner was the only thing they were preparing the night we came here. Without seeing a whole menu I cannot justify a 4 star review. I suspect that if we come back and try something off the regular menu that I would be increasing the rating.

I came here on MLK day during restaurant week for my sister’s birthday (party of 6). I ordered off a set menu, which included a 3 course meal and a glass of wine. This menu was probably atypical of what they usually serve, but this is my breakdown anyway:
I generally don’t like seafood except fish, but I devour crab cakes, which is what I started with. The flavor of the cakes was on point, but the center was too moist for me. The salad garnish went really well with the cakes, and they served it with some buttery sauce. You can’t really go wrong with butter and seafood I guess.
For the entrée, I ordered the smoked red snapper. It was served on top of rice with mixed veggies. They went well together; the fish’s texture was a little tough, but the rice was very saucy and they complimented each other. I was surprised by how filling the dish was because I usually don’t get full at supposed «up-​scale restaurants.» So I was impressed.
For dessert, I got the bread pudding. This was probably my favorite dish. It was served hot and topped with some kind of bourbon sauce. The bitter alcohol flavor of the sauce and the sweetness of the pudding blended nicely.
4 stars for food.
Service… This was what lacked the most during my dining experience.
First, my water — there weren’t too many people there at the time so I did not feel as if I should have to ask for water from the staff at a place like this. I even saw one of the staff eye my empty water goblet as i toyed with it, and she did nothing.
Second, I used to be a busser, and when floating around the room to clear dishes, I knew better than be invasive in any way while someone who was eating. Our server, who never introduced herself btw, lacked tact when looking to clear our dishes. She would approach us and then mumbled something about us not having dishes to clear. When I’m eating, the only thing I would like to be bothered about is water (or drink)… which you can just pour without asking if the person clearly drinks a lot of it while eating.
Third, this should get better with time, but I did not feel confident in the staff’s serving and clearing ability. When they held plates and dishes, they did not seem well balanced, and balancing a plate with a bowl on top upon your wrist doesn’t help. Luckily, no one dropped anything (except a fork). Also, instead of going around the table to place plates, they would hand the middle person the plates to pass along. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that unprofessional.
2 stars for service/​staff
Lastly, atmosphere…
Not much to say — it was quiet when no one was in and loud when it started to fill. They have stereo problems like the track skipping until someone fixed it like an old jukebox. Also, the bass was too loud, I couldn’t recognize most some of the songs because all I could hear was deep vibration coming from the ceiling fixtures.
3 for atmosphere
Overall, my dining experience average. I was neither wowed nor disappointed. If you see something on the menu that you like, it will probably taste awesome, and you should go get it. If you’re looking for a place to impress someone, I’d look elsewhere.
(4+2+3)÷3 = 3

Every meal we’ve had at Seison has been fantastically, good! I mean, how often do you dine at a restaurant and go up and down the menu with appetizers, entrée, and dessert, and EVERYTHING’S fantastic? Some things can be good, but this Chef knows his stuff. Too bad we missed the coupon deadline they gave us.
Oh well, I guess a new pair of stilettos will have to make up for it, but I’ll wear me flats because I want to run in. Great food, great décor.

This review was only for the bar, and it was horrible!
I went here for a comedy show, and I was standing at the bar for a good 15 minutes before I was served, as the same with 5 other people around me. I believe their credit card machine was down, but I wish they had the courtesy to let customers know, instead of just keeping their backs to us the whole time.
Thought I’d be adventurous and ordered a chambord margarita off the menu. I get it, sit down, take a sip and realize that has not one ounce of tequila in that. I let another waitress know about the incorrect order and order another chambord margarita in hopes of getting the correct drink. Um, no. Bartender still didn’t get it. I finally just got a margarita because I was hoping that’d be simple enough to do. Hmph.

A three star rating is a fair and reasonable one for this restaurant with the combination of their banquet room. A group of us were considering this venue for an upcoming celebratory event and decided to do a tasting of their hors d’oeuvres recently.
The banquet rooms and the restaurant part (to be used as a dance floor) were perfect to hold about 125 people comfortably. It had a nice décor…5 stars.
When we first met with Raj Hameed, General Manager of the Washington Inn, he was accommodating with what we wanted, offered us pretty good rates for staying a night at the inn and provided us with the banquet and hors d’oeuvres menus. The deposit amount was pretty reasonable, too. We were very impressed with his presentation and everything seemed like it «was a go for this venue.»
But then he was also non-​responsive to our emails for clarification of the proposed contract and late for scheduled meetings to discuss our event. There were delays and eventually it was getting to the point that we were getting frustrated and we started asking ourselves if we were facing disappointment or disaster. The rating is slipping slightly…3.5 to 4 stars.
The tasting appointment was set up and we were there for the presentation of the hors d’oeuvres that we selected. What was given to us for sampling were mini spinach quiche, catfish nuggets, crispy spring rolls, coconut prawns, chicken wings and fresh crab cakes. Half of these items was not what we selected to sample. We also agreed that these items must have come frozen from Smart ‘n Final… heat and serve. One of my friends and I felt the only thing that tasted decent was the chicken wing. The crust of the quiche was burnt on the bottom. The sriracha hot sauce overwhelmed the taste of the crispy spring rolls. The coconut prawns were baked too long… they were hard, too crunchy and lacking in flavor. Crab cakes and catfish nuggets — meh. Overall, the hors d’oeuvres rated out at 2 stars.
At this point, I am not going to elaborate on the lack of restaurant etiquette on the part of the server placing food on the table…2 stars.
In conclusion, it was nice that Raj gave us the opportunity to sample the hors d’oeuvres, but what was offered for consumption leaves a lot to be desired. Thus, taking the good with the bad, my rating remains at 3 stars.