Sushi Nova - Chicago — Restaurant in Chicago

I would have loved to give this place 5 stars, maybe we caught them on an off day.

My husband and I went here on a Friday evening at 7:15. Not too packed when we got there. Inside was pretty big with a bar in the center. It did get packed soon after fairly quickly.

Our waitress was new so I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. We started out with appetizers, or so we thought. We pointed to what we wanted on the app section of the menu and I also ordered my roll. The chicken gyoza took really long to come out, by the time it came to me the gyoza lost its heat. My husband ordered seared scallops. We kept wondering what was taking so long. Finally the dish came and instead of seared scallops the waitress put in scallop roll. I got the vegetable deluxe roll which was delicious. We wanted to order more food but it was so hard to flag down the waitress. It seemed there were only 3 servers for the entire place for a Friday night. We kept waiting and waiting and finally decided to leave because it was just too long. A lot of people had issues flagging someone down to order and to get their check.

Again, maybe we caught them on an off day. But I would give them another chance because food was...

At first, I was skeptical about this restaurant when we arrived. At the entrance, there was a waving lucky cat figurine — a very Chinese touch. Then we were seated, and the plates had Korean writing on them. Honestly, there was nothing Japanese about the place, and the sushi was being prepared by Mexican staff. So, from the “Japanese” part, we didn’t really see anything authentic.

However, I still gave it 5 stars because of the outstanding service from our waiter. He truly lifted our mood and made the evening special. The portions were also large and quite tasty. We came on Labor Day, when many restaurants were closed, but this one was open. There was even a giant waving cat at the entrance that made for a fun photo.

In the end, my impression completely changed. I would, however, recommend that the restaurant update their plates. They were plastic with visible tape and stickers, clearly old and probably bought second-hand from a closing Korean restaurant. That part really needs improvement. But overall, I highly recommend this place — especially thanks to our wonderful waiter from Indonesia, who truly made our...

Totally fine experience at a fair price. Better quality sushi than a lot of other spots in the city, but nothing standout. The cucumber salad was different than I've had other places and was kind of hard to eat - it pulled like spaghetti noodles. The crab rangoon were good. I got the chef coconut shrimp and the sauce was super tasty but the tempura shrimp was coldish/room temperature which made it a little weird as a bite. The sushi was all good, but almost all of my rolls were not rolled closed which made it hard to eat as they were falling apart. The tempura Oreos were not totally what I was expecting and felt stale, but I ate them without complaints and the sauce was great. Overall, everything was good and enjoyable, and the sushi tasted fresh. I felt for the price, it's what I expected and I wasn't disappointed. My major disappointment however was with the service, as I never was approached for a water refill and it was hard to get anyone's attention to stop, even when it appeared to be fairly slow...