Sushi Nabe — Restaurant in Chattanooga

My fiancé and I ate here last night as a celebratory engagement dinner. We love sushi nabe and consider it our “spot” because it was our first-date restaurant. Food was amazing, but service was not. Kari (I believe was her name, reddish/brown hair and glasses) was our server and I will honestly say we have never had such terrible service. I’ve served for years myself, so I understand we have bad days sometimes but this was absolutely ridiculous. We always order the same thing everytime we come here, the Hawaiian spring rolls, calamari, and blue ridge rolls (amazing) so we gave her our appetizers and specifically said “can we get the hawaiian spring rolls and jumbo calamari” but when the appetizers came, we received the veggie spring rolls and the hawaiian spring rolls. We brought to her attention that we did not order the veggie spring rolls and she looked very confused, so I added that we only ordered the Hawaiian spring rolls and the calamari. She said “so you don’t want the veggie spring rolls?” like…no. We didn’t order them. She then left with the veggie spring rolls. We finish our hawaiian rolls and now we are waiting (or so we thought) for our calamari to come out. Normally the appetizers come out one at a time so no big deal. But then our entrees come which was strange to me, especially since she didn’t say anything to address the missing calamari, so I asked her when it would be coming out. She said rudely, “…you didn’t order calamari.” Now, as someone who has served in multiple restaurants I would have NEVER said that! Even if I misunderstood the guest or didn’t hear them order it, I would never blame them! Especially since we did order them and then reminded her of them when she dropped off the hawaiian spring rolls. The appropriate thing to do would have been apologize, explain you misunderstood and that you will get that working asap. But she didn’t apologize. She only stared at us blankly and asked if we still wanted the calamari. I explained to her that we did order them, and we reminded her of them again when she dropped off the appetizer. And she continued the blank stare and asked again “…so do you still want the calamari?” I said yes and she left the table to put the order in. She never checked in on us again, didn’t refill our drinks, didn’t collect dirty plates, nothing. Didn’t get the plates until it was time for the check to roll around, of course. She dropped the check off once again still no apology, just the standard, “Have a good night.” We were absolutely not rude to her in any way, especially as a server I could never be rude to one of my own! But her attitude and service was absolutely horrendous, and that’s coming from someone easy to please. Completely ruined our dinner and honestly left a bad taste in our mouth...

Delightful experience!! My husband wrote this following review: Sushi Nabe - Chattanooga, TN Date of visit: 09/18/2021 Sushi Nabe is located north of the Tennessee River at 110 River Street in Chattanooga, TN. We arrived around 6 PM. We were advised of a 20 minute wait. The time passed quickly as we surveyed our surroundings. The first thing that caught my attention was a large cabinet filled with small numbered colored boxes. Our hostess informed me that they contained chopsticks belonging to many of their customers. They opened the restaurant about 27 years ago and have since accumulated several thousand pairs of personalized chopsticks as a sort of customer loyalty program. When we were escorted into the dining area we passed an impressive display of Samurai armor. We were seated in front of the sushi bar where we could watch our meal being prepared. Our server’s name was Taizo. He normally worked the bar, but due to an unexpected staff shortage he was filling in where ever he could. Some people are not cut out for working under these circumstances. However, Taizo demonstrated that he was well able to handle the kitchen, the sushi bar, the drinks and wait tables with zeal. He patiently explained the menu to us and delivered our meals with speed and grace. We enjoyed the Sashimi Deluxe, the Godzilla Roll, salads, miso soup, Sapporo Lite beer and two orders of hot peach Sake. As we ate it occurred to me that this didn’t feel like a typical restaurant experience at all. I felt as if I had been invited into someone’s home to enjoy their culture and hospitality. It felt refreshingly normal in context of the abnormal times in which we live. After the meal we briefly chatted with Taizo. The man working at the sushi bar is his father. The woman assembling the take-out and waiting tables is his mother. Sushi Nabe is not a franchise. It is a family owned and operated business. I don’t know when we will be back to visit Chattanooga, but I do know that when we do there will be a pair of chopsticks waiting for us at Sushi Nabe. Knowing that feels good. Overall, I can’t think of anything that could have been better. I rate the...

The restaurant looks really cool from the outside, and we love sushi so we looked up the rating and thought 4.4 stars couldn’t be bad. Our local sushi spot back home in little old Clemson, SC has the same rating and it is phenomenal, so we were expecting something of a similar quality.

For starters, we should have turned and walked out when we noticed there was absolutely no wait during the dinner rush on a Sunday night. We figured everyone was out watching the last leg of the Ironman competition so we were glad to get right in and seated. We ordered pretty quickly, and then we waited… and we waited… and an hour later we were presented with the most confusing dishes we’ve ever been served at a Japanese restaurant. My husband ordered the steak and shrimp dinner… now in a Japanese restaurant, you would expect a hibachi style steak and shrimp dinner, right? He got a regular sirloin that was medium rare on one half and almost well done on the other with raw unseasoned vegetables, overcooked rice, overcooked shrimp on a skewer, and for some unknown reason… 8 steak fries?! My special roll was an abomination… I ordered what was supposed to be a deep fried roll with crab and cream cheese inside topped with crab, mayo sauce, spicy sauce, and crunchies. What I got was a doughy, cold, soggy log covered in imitation crab that was covered in so much mayo that it looked like coleslaw.

The only saving grace was they removed the special roll from the bill, but we wanted to have a nice dinner for the last night of our trip to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and this was not it. We left hungry, with $50 less in the bank and ate ice...