All Blue — Restaurant in Bolingbrook

I really wish I didn't have to do this, but All Blue left me no choice. I drove 2 hours from central Illinois to Bollingbrook to meet a friend at IKEA. I passed this restaurant (on Rte. 53) on the way and decided to stop on the way home. I walked in shortly after 7:30pm, and the main dining room was pretty full. The hostess was on the phone for several minutes before greeting me, and I let her know I was by myself for the all-you-can-eat. What happened next was stunning: I was told the kitchen was "down one person," so they weren't seating any more people in the dining room tonight. They were only doing carryout orders. I told the hostess I wasn't in a hurry, so slower than normal service wasn't going to bother me, but she insisted. I couldn't be seated. They were just too busy and too shorthanded to serve one more person in the next 90 minutes. After a brief appeal, I shrugged and told the hostess I'd be leaving a very unfavorable review. All of a sudden, she sprang to life as I had turned to walk out, but I had heard enough. I was out the door and off the curb into the parking lot when she appeared in the doorway. I'm not sure if she was trying to appeal to me again that they were shorthanded, but I simply explained to her that I wasn't going to debate in a parking lot. She made it clear: they were too busy to serve a single person in the dining room. So I turned and walked a few more steps to my car. At that point, I made a conscious decision: I was going to leave. My other option was to wait until the next car pulled in to see if that party was seated. Nothing good was going to come of that, and I knew it. A few important points here... there was no sign on the door or at the hostess station stating the dining room wasn't going to be able to accommodate additional patrons tonight. If this really was a matter of being understaffed, a good manager would let the hostess know that every party that needed to be turned away should be asked politely to wait a second while (the hostess) brought the manager out so some sort of concession could be offered (a coupon or a buy one/get one... something). That didn't happen, either. So all of this was totally arbitrary, and it felt that way. I won't seat you by yourself, because our kitchen is too busy, but our kitchen isn't too busy to fulfill carryout orders. Does that make sense? That's a hard sell for me. So what really happened tonight, in my opinion? Two things: first of all, I was definitely lied to, and second of all, I was probably discriminated against. The first part is self-explanatory. Nobody is too busy to serve one person 90 minutes before close, especially after I said I wasn't in a hurry. The second part is a little more nuanced. You see, I'm a little bigger than the average guy. I still shop at regular men's stores, and I only use the standard seat belt on an airplane, but there's no question I'm "a few extra pounds." So does All Blue refuse service when the customer being seated looks like (he's) potentially going to be a negative value for an all-you-can-eat menu? Honestly, in my opinion, it sure feels like that. What other explanation could there be? I wasn't under-dressed, I would have easily fit in with the rest of the patrons who were already seated, wearing khaki shorts, slip-on Sketchers shoes and a long sleeved heather gray crew neck shirt. I also don't have any objectionable outward appearances (other than being overweight), so it's not like I was going to make any of the other guests uncomfortable. I'll obviously never come back to this restaurant, and based on some of the other reviews I'm seeing from people who weren't lied to (and actually ate), I'm glad I was deemed unworthy....

I took my son for his birthday yesterday, 6 PM on a Saturday. We didn't have reservations, and had to wait which was expected and fine, plus it was only about 20 minutes. My son was excited to see the One Piece statues and memorabilia and to try sushi for the first time. We knew it was an all you can eat restaurant, but items were also priced separately.

We sat down and looked over the menu. The only option was the all you can't eat menu for $33 for my husband and I and lesser charge for our 10 year old. We are not big eaters at all and would have loved to order per roll instead. Plus there is a $1 per piece charge for uneaten food. My son ordered a cucumber roll and a summer roll to try plus chicken nuggets and one piece of sea bass sushi. I ordered a Maro Maro and All Blue. My husband ordered one roll. We only had two sets of chop sticks and water.

The waitress took our blue sheets and disappeared. No drink orders...nothing. they brought out chicken nuggets, dropped them and ran. They felt frozen, but the kid loved them so whatever. I caught someone and asked if they had training chop sticks. Before I could finish my sentence she was gone. Brought back the adapter and gone as soon as my hand touched plastic. Now we have an adapter, and still two sets of chopsticks. My husband was through his water and had an empty glass.

Someone else dropped off their two plates and ran. My son only had the cucumber roll and the summer (cucumber and apple) no sea bass.

I caught someone and finally got another set of chopsticks started to say, "Can we..." And they were gone. My husband was thirsty.

My rolls came out and the Maro Maro was huge. The other roll was definitely not the All Blue I don't know what it was. Could I tell someone? No, they were gone. My husband liked his roll a lot. My son hates sushi, so now we're desperate trying to eat his cucumber and summer roll.

I ate half of the Maro Maro roll and felt like I was going to die, because it was huge. And the flavor was...meh...

I liked the mystery roll better, whatever it was...there was shrimp and wasabi. I think the Monster Trio maybe? But...$1 per leftover piece kept running through my head. My husband finally grabbed a staff running by to get a Diet Coke. I'm trying desperately to shove sushi in despite being full counting down the extra dollars we would have to pay. We got it down to $6 and felt gross, my son was blissfully unaware. He ordered fries. Again, clearly frozen but kid happy.

The bill was $89 before tip they didn't charge for extra pieces, so...I was overly full for no reason. My husband paid the bare minimum tip because, well, there was no service. Even the wait-list was confusing as I got a text to go the counter but the app said there were still two tables ahead of us. The One Piece stuff was neat, but it felt more like being a collector's basement rather than a themed space. The food was average and there was no service. But my son was happy and unaware on his birthday. That is why I am giving two stars. You couldn't drag me back there, but the...

Let me start this by saying that if you are a one piece fan it has a nice e atmosphere. However that's the only thing nice I can say about this place.

My experience was on a Friday but honestly even that could not excuse the poor service. When my group was originally sat there was no request for drinks. We just received waters and moved on with our day. My group typically does an appetizer round before ordering sushi. The tray they served the appetizers in was nice, and different but that was the end of anything positive I have to say about this place. When we got to the sushi we decided to ask for actual drinks. The soda came up instantly, followed by the tea shortly after. We waited 20 min to get the two Boba teas, and only got those because we flagged someone down and they handed us two cans of boba tea. Not sure why that toke 20 min, and im not exaggerating about that. All while through that entire process we had our waters filled once. And that one time was rhe only time. Every roll we received was poorly wrapped and fell apart no matter how careful you were(I go to sushi restaurants regularly, it wasn't a skill issue on my part). Finally the icing on top of all this is im pretty sure we only got about 20% of what we ordered. We focused on all the unique rolls that were themed to one piece, and on our second round of sushi the serve gave up trying to tell us what they were when she realized we had 3 full rolls of chicken tempura. I've never been served so much cucumber in my life at one of these restaurants. To just add a little more detail we only ordered one of each roll we ordered, there were no duplicates. The last thing I have to say about the food was that the rolls with strong sauces toke so long to get to us, the bottom layer of rice soaked up enough to ruin the flavor, and the deep fried roll we ordered came out cold. As for the service, I had my back to the sushi bar but my party toke note that some of the servers didnt know where they were taking the orders. One even walked between tables asking if they ordered it.

The saddest part avout all this is Google delayed me writing this review because of bot reviews, and the frustration I had that night is enough I can still remember it clear as day.

Honestly i want to say go there to experience it if you are a one piece fan, but it was so bad I will not go there ever again and I will warn my brother who is a major one piece fan to avoid it because as nice as the atmosphere is, the service and food had me to pissed off by the end of the night to enjoy...