Ai Sushi & Grill — Restaurant in Colorado Springs

Updated from a five star review to two. TL/DR Training, service and management are currently a huge hinderance at this location. Our family went for a small birthday party last Tuesday with five people. We were sat promptly and there were approximately 3 tables in the dining room and one grill table half occupied. Waitress took 15 minutes to visit table and take drink order and forgot one of the five people at the table. She already looked a little lost and frantic. 15 minutes later our drinks show up with one person in party still not having ordered and at this point no waters and no silverware. Two hot sake's were ice cold and large Sapporo came with no glass. At 40 minutes finally all drinks were ordered and we had the chance to get our food order in.

Food took abnormally long to arrive we are now at 1hour 35 minutes when food finally shows up. We ordered two veggie tempura appetizers, both showed up with the rest of the food and one was the full dinner( much larger portion), large sushi platter showed up with no ginger no wasabi and one of the $18 dollar rolls was incorrect. When all arrived we still did not have water, plates, silverware or napkins. The waitress after setting all the food down asked if we needed anything. We explained we were missing all of the above including the standard sides with the sushi, she apologized and stated it was her first night and walked away clearly stressed. She then proceeded to walk out of the restaurant leaving us and two other tables without a waitress. We finally let the hostess know, who went back and got the kitchen manager who came out to talk to us. He was clearly agitated and complained that she had walked out on them and confirmed it was this servers first night. He proceeded to confirm the mistakes and did correct the mistakes of the roll and larger tempura, bill but did not give us any additional credit for the terrible service, cold sake or the fact the dinner took over 2 hours to complete.

As a result we will likely not be back for a while if ever. My family ran restaurants for decades in Colorado Springs and while I believe the challenge for good employees these days are significant, this was clearly a lack of front of the house management and training. This experience was by no means the fault of the poor server who I honestly don't blame for walking. She clearly had not been trained and was thrown onto the floor with no assistance or shadowing experience. While she was clearly struggling there were no less than three people milling around the front of the house (hostess, other waiter not busy and front of the house manager) not offering any help to someone who doesn't know their system at all.

Unless AI gets their management situation in order they will continue to struggle to find good servers at this location. We used to visit this location at least once a month and have spent hundreds of dollars here in the past year. The fact we were not offered anything in compensation for this miserable and very sub-par experience is a huge customer service fail and it shows the culture at this establishment needs a significant adjustment if they don't want to chase off their local loyal...

We went in right at 5pm for Valentine’s Day. We are asked if we had a reservation which we did not, however the host said that as long as we were done by 6pm he could seat us so that all of the reservations which were set to start at 6 would have open tables (we always get the same thing so we were ready to order the second we got seated. It took 15 minutes from the time we were seated for the host to come back by to take our order. I had to flag down a waitress 30 minutes after we were seated to ask her to bring us our waters and appetizers. She said to us that our host had taken our order but nothing had been properly communicated to her so she was trying to get everything right. 1 hour after we were seated, 45 minutes after we ordered our 3 rolls we’re finally brought to the table and the food was outstanding. Once the $70 check came out 90 minutes after we were seated 30 minutes after the host told us we needed to be done, we handed our waitress a $100 bill and asked for her to bring back the change to which she replied “we don’t have enough change to bring back” ($30 on Valentine’s Day when you have a reservation list so long that you needed us gone) yeah okay.

That was just our experience without mentioning that the whole restaurant being with less than 1/3 of the tables seated had lovely couples who made reservations and were left for so long without a waitress coming by that they were leaving out of frustration. Or the disgruntled, confused looking around every patron in the restaurant had trying to figure out what was happening.

I used to come here often and after reading reviews on this place this morning it seems like this restaurant has been in a tailspin for well over a year.

To the owner, you need to take these bad reviews to heart and tighten your ship otherwise I fear that your once loved restaurant will become nothing but a faint memory. The locals on the northwest side of town want restaurants like yours to thrive, by doing nothing which you seem to be doing you are actively destroying your reputation and killing your business. Please do better. Your host (son of the sushi chef), and waitress (with the colorful hair and piercings) were very kind despite the atrocity of last night which is the only reason why I gave 2 stars. They...

Their online menu doesn’t show their hibachi options so that was problem number one. I called to ask if they served hibachi to go. He said yes I proceeded to place my order. Now I will take the fact that I ordered things not knowing the exact price but all I asked for was steak and shrimp hibachi with noodles, steak and shrimp hibachi with fried rice and a volcano roll. Now the man never told me the total over the phone so when I go to pick up my food and it’s close to $90 and they just hand me 1 bag of food I start asking questions. Well steak and shrimp alone costs $30 each. Does not even include rice or noodles that’s an extra $3-$5 and the roll was $10. The roll understandable, sushi isn’t cheap but I have never paid $90 for just the things I had order. Anyways I pay for the food whatever they already prepared everything and we were hungry. Now I said before I left I hope the food is at least good for the price that I’m paying. Manager assured me the food was great and that I would like it. When I say this was the absolute worst experience and food I’ve ever had from any hibachi place from many different states. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I paid $90 for food I couldn’t even eat. They used no seasonings I guess they thought the sauce would be enough or something. The rice was oily and literally gave me a stomach ache for 4 days. I mean it was just terrible. And the manager sucks. He just told me well I mean it is what it is people pay for our food. Like huh how do you have that kind of attitude with a customer and your food isn’t even up to par with the prices you’re...