Monica Peou
Google
Hubby and I wanted a date night and we saw this spot on Instagram from a foodie we follow so we made a Resy last minute to dine at the sushi bar on Thursday, 12/29. Upon arriving, I felt super silly not knowing which door was the entrance because it was all glass and enclosed and there was no hostess standing to greet us. Once we saw someone else enter, we followed and were met with a hostess and another who led us to the sushi bar that had 6 open seats-we were sat in the middle of the 6 counter seats. Note: it didn’t feel like a warm welcome even though we were excited to dine here - haven’t you guys seen Restaurant Wars on Top Chef, don’t you know greeting customers and how you make them feel can make or a break a restaurant?? Ah, I digress. We ordered cocktails which were delicious-the Bingo Bango was beautiful, ordered crispy tuna rice, a Little Fiish (pictured) and Big Fiish (they are versions of what felt like Sugarfish‘s Trust Me and Trust Me Lite) and got everything pretty fast. I would have preferred our sushi to come omakese style as opposed to everything all at once on one plate as well as had our sushi explained (what was what). We also had to ask for ginger and wasabi, which I would think this would already be ready for us or we should have been asked if we wanted them. I’m also a bit sad that there was an off menu of toro fish that I found out after reading reviews and not hearing any specials from the server. The crispy tuna rice was probably the best I’ve had in awhile, but the sushi tuna rolls were a bit salty and everything else was mediocre. Overall, we felt like pricing and amount of food were fine, but what really ruined our experience was mid-meal. We were interrupted by the blonde female hostess who said, “I hate to ask this, but do you mind moving over a few seats because there is a party of 4 that wants to sit at the sushi bar.” My husband reluctantly agreed as I was stuffing a tuna roll in my mouth and while she started moving things, I quickly asked if the 4 people can wait because we can just wrap up our meal where we were seated as we would be done soon. My husband had literally just ordered another drink and I was midway into a meal that I was enjoying. The blonde hostess said it was fine and we continued to sit where we were. Why did she even interrupt us and ask? Why were we seated in the middle of 6 counter seats and not the corner seats in case 4 people wanted sushi bar seats? To compare, Kazunori wouldn’t ask 2 people to scoot over so they can fit a party of 4…they would wait until that party’s meal is completed. I was already turned off by this, but what really upset me was the fact that the people she wanted seated at the sushi bar (our seats) were 2 girls that greeted the workers there-clearly they knew the folks that work there and they wanted to please these girls. Instead of asking them to wait, we were asked to uncomfortably move all 10 of our dishes over to make room. As we paid for our meal, I let our server, Randy, know about what we were asked by the hostess and how I felt and he kindly apologized.
Sadly, this is exactly the type of service that lives up to how LA is so pretentious. There’s so much potential here with high quality sushi and fun drinks, but it’s unfortunate that the front of house lacks decency. I didn’t pay $200 to be disrespected. I hate to write a bad review, but I would definitely not recommend (sushi wasn’t anything life changing) or be coming back because my experience fell short of a great date night.