Zen 16 Sushi Cafe — Restaurant in Bel Air

I've traveled all around the world for business and finding a good Sushi place has always been one of my top priorities when I am able to get away from everything. Obviously the best has always been in Either Japan or Korea and even a surprisingly good place is Sofia, Bulgaria. Zen16 ranks up there with one of the best I've been too. When my wife and I moved to this area back in 2016, we literally tried every single Sushi restaurant within an hour drive of our house and this topped the charts. Starting off with just their food, it's the attention to detail in the quality and plating that really makes this place so well. They take their time to ensure the rice is perfect before constructing the Sushi and they make sure it looks just as good on the plate as it does with taste. Their plating changes over time so it’s never just the same old thing, they seem to grow along with their customers. They do add new items to their menu from time to time and always seem to have a new type of roll they’re trying out, that makes the experience very unique. On to their staff, to put it simply, there are times where the wife and I haven’t gone there in over 6 months; however, the minute we walk in, we are greeted by name and shown to our table. To date… since 2016, myself, my wife, any everyone else we’ve suggested to go to this restaurant, no one has had an issue with it. Now I understand that there will be things that go wrong from time to time, we are all human, but I will be honest and say they will never lose my business when that does...

I really hate giving restaurants one stars but after being treated so poorly and ignored for the better part of 15 minutes I think this one star rating is appropriate. I routinely come in here to eat and the food is always good The wait times can be excessive but the food is always good. I am a current DoorDash delivery driver. I went to pick up an order that was scheduled for delivery and the pickup time given to me by the restaurant was 7:02 I waited inside the restaurant for a half an hour with little to no explanation on why my food was not ready. The woman behind the counter seen flustered and upset and unwilling to answer questions. They had a current stack of half-finished orders sitting out in an uncooled area. Please keep in mind that this was sushi and not cooked food. After waiting 28 minutes past the pick up time my order was ready and the woman slided to me and said here. There was no apology there was no sorry for your weight there was no explanation. This restaurant is not capable of taking on delivery driver orders so if you plan on eating at this location on Friday or Saturday night I would advise you to not as they are massively understaffed and refuse to hire staff to appropriately make and...

So when we came in there were no other guests. The lady was inattentive from the start. She got our order and it took much too long for 4 rolls. Only 3 showed up after waiting for so long. We had to ask for soy sauce for our table as none around ours had any either. Only two other tables showed up... so they still weren't busy. They were very stingy with the Ginger. And some of our rolls came with neither wasabi or ginger. Overall the sushi was only okay. Our fourth roll, the volcano roll was the least apetitizing. The lady never refilled our water until we got our check and walked right past our table to go to the table that had to request to refill their empty glasses among other things like utensils for their food and soy sauce. She was never available when we needed something and would walk away just as quickly as she came. The other customers there were also very apparently dissatisfied with the service. This was my first and will be last visit here. Extremely disappointing. I'm going to try Fuji...