Cuddlefish — Restaurant in Dunwoody

TLDR: Pricy as heck for a “smaller than what appears on camera” food. Won’t be back.

Visited yesterday in their soft opening so I’ll be criticizing softly.

I called in for a reservation and the host did a great job and was very friendly and pleasant.

Restaurant was empty at this hour and as we sat, the same server came back twice to ask us if other people were coming and I’ve answered him twice that there will be 4 people total. Seems unprofessional. He should know how many people based on the reservation and not ask me 2x if we were waiting on more people… but oh well, he is probably very new as a server.

We ordered 2 appetizers, the fried tofu which was I think $14? Came with 5 pieces of 2 inch tofus. Came to,.. $3 a piece? For tofu? lol…. Scam. We also ordered fried chicken. Which was just a different name for Taiwanese chicken nuggets. $10, not too unreasonable. But the worst part of this? Those 2 overpriced snacks was 40 minutes long to make for no reason at all considering the restaurant was empty. Had to ask the server 3x if it was coming instead of him letting us know how our food was doing. Apparently he said it is supposed to be served with our temaki? It’s appetizer no? Are we supposed to sit there with our waters for 40 minutes? This displeased me.

My friend ordered their in-house made sake and they were out. We asked him about their other sake options but he did not understand what he was selling. Need more training for sure. Beer took him 20 minutes to grab…. Again…. In a n empty restaurant. Never asked us if we wanted our tea hot or cold so they messed up on the order.

Now let’s talk about the temaki. I think Atlanta restaurant owners just love scamming people with these prices. Some of the original concept of temaki restaurants in west coast and NYC doesn’t even charge this much for a 2 inch mini bites. Kazunori, which is one of the OG temaki restaurants charge $36 (tip included) for 5 PREMIUM hand rolls that includes, yellowtail, salmon, otoro, lobster, and lastly creamy scallops. What do I get for $32 in Cuddlefish? yellowtail, salmon , shrimp tempura (cheap crap), crab scallop, and 3 think slices of avocados (a HUGE scam). Easy to say I will not be coming back.

Another annoying reason would be these plastic that covers the nori… I get the point of trying to keep it fresh but the point of the nori is if you’re serving me 5 temaki at the same time like some of the other restaurants I’ve had it in. Waiting an hour for 2 bites of food that I have to push plastic out of IS NOT a good experience. Also waiting an hour for 5 pieces of “snacks” isn’t great. We all left very hungry and disappointed. Is the food good? It’s okay. Definitely wouldn’t rave about it. The best thing I liked from it was the crab scallop.

The biggest turn off is prices. Atmosphere was probably the best thing they offer. Also manager took a while going back and forth trying to figure out how to check us out. Definitely need to work on their kinks. Service being crap is fine, but the food needs to cover that lack there of. Which it did not.

Despite my review I know this place will do well, because Atlantans do not know the value of the food they’re eating because it’s simply...

Second time coming here. First time, service was good. Disappointing experience tonight. We had a party of 5 for the temaki takeover.

Things to note: Bar seating only, so first come first serve — no reservations Starters are unlimited, temaki options are limited to 3 per round and you can only choose one from Creations, one from Classic, and one from Veggie at a time 90 minute period from the time you sit down (so make sure your entire party is present)

What we didn’t expect is that you can only order the next round only when your entire party has completed their rounds. Depending on if your party ordered multiple starters and takes time to finish their temaki, this will limit your total time.

Our primary server took his time in coming around, so this also delayed our ability to continue ordering as we liked. We wanted to order drinks, but he took so much time to come by that we decided it wasn’t worth it. We also had our waters refilled a total of two times during the entire 90 minute period and had to flag down our waiter more than once for assistance. There was only one chef working for most of the time, but he was taking care of everyone also ordering temaki (ranged from 6-11 people at different points). We also observed the chef taking orders directly from a party sitting at the bar, whereas we were waiting for our waiter to come by to take our party’s order. This naturally delayed the process. Our orders were forgotten multiple times and my friend didn’t even get her last starter. Our waiter did come by to let us know we were nearing the end of the 90 minute period and he specifically said he’d come back to take our final orders. When he did come back, he notified us that the 90 minute period was over and he would be giving us our checks.

The seaweed was soggy and the rolls were very densely packed with a lot of rice. Overall wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either.

For those thinking the temaki takeover is a great deal, just take it with a grain of salt. Depending on your serving staff at the time, it really might not be worth it. Seems like there are other reviews with a similar experience with the staff. There is an automatic 20% service charge automatically added to the bill, so perhaps this is the reason for poor service. Pros are free parking and the restaurant has a...

For background, I went with a group of 5 for their unlimited temaki (and starters) experience.

When we first came in, it was just us at the bar + a table of 2 in the dining area. Which, we truly only noticed bc the service was s l o w.

You have 90 mins for the experience. there is only 1 sushi/temaki chef, even when the entire bar filled. Another chef would occasionally come to help. Unsure if it was only 2 chefs total (1 back, 1 at the bar), but it delayed your orders —- esp since your entire group had to be done with their hand roll prior to placing in additional orders.

there was a couple next to us, who would interrupt the only sushi chef at the bar (while he was placing our hand rolls on our plates) to place their orders —- and instead of deferring to either 1) the server or 2) waiting until after he was done serving our group, he would take their order. which, to be fair, the server would not regularly check in with the diners about their orders, so I understand the pressure to circumvent the server and go straight to the sushi chef —- bc you’re on a time limit with again, slow service.

subpar service continues when they serve you water at the beginning —- and no one checked in for more water until one of the people in our group asked one of the food runners.

the service was so slow and unevenly distributed that the sushi chef noticed we were not being attended to and asked one of the food runners if anyone had taken our orders.

our server came back, told us he would wait until our hand rolls were finished to check in on us, and then when he checked in on us, told us our time was up (no 15 min warning, just done).

Now onto the food, it was great! The quality of fish, the quantity of hand rolls you can fit (if you’re vigilant), is well worth the price. The biggest deterrent, as I’ve seen throughout other reviews is the service.

I usually don’t mind an included 20% tip (mentioned prior to the beginning of the experience and on their website) but this one felt like proper service/attitude/attention is...