Sora 天 — Restaurant in Cleveland

Restaurant beautifully decorated. Vibe is great, if not a bit loud but I don’t think that’s something they can help. The service staff is very attentive but I will say for as small as the restaurant is I’m pretty surprised at how slow it was for them to come check on us every now and then. Not slow enough to make me change this to a 1, but it had me wondering if they are trying to be lean on staffing on a Saturday night which isn’t a good thing.

Now, on to the food. From the time we ordered our sushi to the time we received our rolls it was easily 45 minutes. I personally watched one of the cooks bring the rolls out and give it to a server who wasn’t ours. She then placed the rolls on the table. Since they serve the rolls on communal plates we tried to have her let us know what roll was which as we had well over 10 of them ordered. Not only did she struggle to do this she told us she would grab someone to help and never ended up actually doing that. It took us 5-10 minutes for us to figure it out ourselves after which we realized we didn’t receive all of our rolls. It took well over an hour for this to be addressed and fixed to the point where we got the roll AFTER we got our entrees. It is a bad look for a chef to just pass off the food like that. In the future, if they are putting so much effort into these rolls, the chef should just be the one delivering out the rolls.

Now the entrees. I have never been to a restaurant where every dish was bad or sent back. There were 7 of us there with 4 of us that ordered entrees. Both people who ordered the curry don said it tasted terrible. The one who ordered the pork belly said it was bad and sent it back. I had the Tonkatsu expecting it was steak because I was asked if medium was okay. It turns out Tonkatsu is actually PORK and they serve it very pink. This one is on me for not reading the menu as carefully but I did attempt to eat it anyway and it was very gummy and fatty, which became hard to swallow as undercooked pork fat is not the easiest thing to eat.

I have a gut feeling this experience with the entrees is a common one as the waitress was asking what was wrong specifically with each dish. You are only doing this if there is a constant issue with the food. At one point a manager came over and was also trying to figure out what was wrong with the food but she came across VERY poorly and was almost accusatory in the way she was talking. It was weird.

We were comped for some of the entrees, which blows my mind it wasn’t all but I’m not even that mad about that part. This was supposed to be a nice dinner to celebrate my wife’s birthday and instead it was a top to bottom terrible experience. I felt like I had to apologize to the people that came with us for making them go through eating at the place. They knew it was for her birthday too and I know common pre open meetings go over bigger tables and special occasions. Maybe they don’t here.

All in all this is up there in my worst restaurants I’ve been to. I would never recommend this place to a friend and if anything, I would be actively persuading them to go some place else.

Great waitress, well decorated restaurant, abysmal...

The worst dining experience of my life from start to finish. If I could give this 0 stars I would. I NEVER write reviews but this needed to be shared. Right from the beginning when we arrived, our table wasn’t open even though we had reservations for well over a month. They tried to offer us a spot in the private dining room but told us we would have to leave in an 1.5 hours because a party was coming in. How are you going to make us wait for a table but then tell us to leave early for someone else? I found that completely unprofessional. We waited for another table instead and it was fine. Not a big deal. But it went severely downhill from there. As soon as we sat down, our waiter told us they were putting a halt on ordering sushi. What???? You’re a SUSHI BAR. How are you going to tell me I can’t order sushi at a sushi bar. That was the whole point of going. He told us it would be around a 30min wait until they opened orders back up again so we said okay and ordered appetizers anyways to hold us over. 30min quickly turned into over an hour and our waiter finally returned and let us order sushi. We ordered 3 of the speciality rolls to start. After almost another hour of waiting for our sushi, we are told they ran out of crab so we would have to pick another roll. Then we had to wait another 20min and they only brought out 2 rolls instead of 3 because apparently when we had to pick another roll substitute it wasn’t going to be made as the same time along with the others and put at the back of the queue which is ridiculous. The rolls were a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. For a “speciality roll” they were SO SMALL. about the size of a regular tuna roll or a California roll and it only came with 8 pieces instead of 10! Not to mention each of these rolls were $30+ each! SUCH A RIP OFF. As we waited for our 3rd roll to show up, we are told they ran out of waygu so we have to pick another roll AGAIN. so we do and end up waiting a total of an hour for this single roll after the others were already delivered. And again it was so tiny and consumed within seconds. I eat sushi regularly and have been to a plethora of sushi bars, not only in Cleveland, but all over the country and have never experienced something as clownish as this. I would never return here and never recommend it. It’s clear they built this just for the money and social media attention and have no idea how to run it properly. We were there for a total of FOUR AND HALF HOURS just sitting around and waiting for overpriced mediocre rolls while club music blared through the speakers. And the owner or manager never once came to speak to tables about what was happening or to apologize. Extremely unprofessional. Yes the decor is nice but absolutely a waste of...

WORST MANAGEMENT TEAM!. Terrible customer service!!!! The worst experience here. The managers need to go to team building training. The team isn’t cohesive, so the execution is butchered. I had the hardest time booking my daughter’s birthday dinner because of management. They failed to follow up with me 4 times. If my daughter hadn’t insisted on this venue I would’ve booked else where. After successfully setting a date the Manager Courtney quoted me a room fee that was $200 more dollars than the prior 4 employees I’ve spoken too. Because no one followed up with me the minimum spend fee was comped. Also because she lied about the price of the room, she comped the room fee. At this point I feel great! I became excited and happy to finally be breaking ground after waiting for feed back for 3 weeks. The day of the party we arrive, I immediately ask if lights can be turned to pink like promised and music be changed. ( side bar in the other private room I can clearly see LIGHTS are changing colors) Instead of asking the building manager she decides to completely ignore me. While scowling the entire time as if she’s annoyed by my party and myself. After struggling to grab drink and food orders for 1.5 hours I ask our server if she can get help. She gets upset, but she does come back with more servers. We were a party of 20. 1 server is not efficient for a party of 10 let alone 20. (Their excuse was I booked for 15, although 5 more guest arrived 1 server was not sufficient for 15 people.) After more servers come to assist FINALLY food is being brought out, drinks are being filled everything is moving effectively and efficiently after waiting for 2.5 hours. Even though it was Saturday night the main lobby was empty possibly 10 guests. So the restaurant wasn’t busy. The management just didn’t see our party as priority which trickled down to staff. Our food and drinks were ignored and delayed. I voiced my dissatisfaction with Courtney the scowling manager and finally at 9:45 (we arrived at 7) she changed the lights and gave us music. This was the worst experience and I hate this is how my daughter was treated for her 16th birthday. All they gave were excuses instead of taking accountability. From start to finish I had completely been dissatisfied. They completely dropped the ball and I hope they make changes because the blatant disregard for my family was unacceptable and inexcusable. We were at Tao in Vegas and it was much busier and our waitress was so accommodating and our food came in order. Appetizers first then entree. Nothing like how we were...