CO — Restaurant in Durham

Sunday, August 24, 2025. First visit to CO at Southpoint Mall in Durham, early dinner, walked in at 4:30, fairly empty as you would expect. Finished and left at 5:15. This struck us as an average sushi mall-type restaurant. I think they would struggle as a destination restaurant; lots of hungry shoppers probably help their business model. We spent about 25% more here for roughly the same meals (2 of us) than at a couple of really great sushi restaurants we frequent, one in Holly Springs, NC and the other in Cary, NC we frequent, but we were shopping at the mall and hungry. Bill with tip for 2 beers, hot tea, tap water, 2 appetizers, three rolls was $102 (2 specialty rolls and a basic California roll). At the other two places that’d be roughly $82 including the tip. Sanitation rating was 97. This is a fairly new restaurant so suggest looking up what they got dinged for by the county health agency online. Our other two restaurants were 100 and 99 by comparison, but established places. Our shoes stuck to the floor everywhere we walked at CO. Never experienced that in a restaurant, anywhere. Came home and sprayed Lysol on our shoe soles, not good. I was excited to see a large selection of Japanese beers, especially Singha, my fave. Tried to order, sorry, out. Then it went like this: Sapporo? Out. Ashahi? Out. Kirin? Out. Then told they were out of all Japanese beers (at a sushi restaurant!), and I was then asked “how about a Tsing Tao” (Chinese)? OK, but bottom of the list for me. Came back minutes later, nope, out of that too even though it was suggested. OK, how about a good ole Blue Moon (USA)? Nope, don’t carry it. Wow. What import is left that you carry? Chang (Thai). There we go! Although, I’ve never had that beer before, but I was getting fatigued and wanted to get on with dinner. Had two Chang drafts, both came with a 2-3 inch foam head, not supposed to happen with an experienced bartender pulling draft. Doesn’t ever happen at the other two sushi restaurants mentioned previously. Maybe some people like foam. I don’t. Food: We ordered Steamed pork & ginger gyoza (was partially fried and steamed, not again), and edamame-no salt (excellent). Wife ordered California roll for $11 (excellent) with hot tea (good). I ordered the Blossom roll (average) for $18.50 and the Fiji Salmon roll (salmon was chewy, not sure how that works when it’s raw). Not a good roll and not worth $18.50 in my opinion. So two specialty rolls that don’t rate better than average for $37. We asked for fresh wasabi, nope, they only have the standard paste, but he did offer 3 different kinds of sauces (the house chili sauce was really spicy and heavy chili taste). When I mentioned the heat level to the waiter, I got “oh yeah, I probably should have warned you about that…I will definitely remember to tell anyone else ordering that…OK, he had to be new. Service: pleasant, but waiter was wound up, nonstop chatter and nervous like he’d been caught doing something. We think we were his only table as there were only 3 other tables seated and each had service providers it seemed. Bad case of nerves I guess. One of my rolls came served on my wife’s plate with an apology that he could “fix it” if we wanted to. It got served to us anyway knowing the presentation was wrong. Big Brownie Point deduct on that one. Mixing orders on the wrong plates is sophmoric. So, for a mall-sushi place when you are really hungry and that hunger trumps all the above, go for it. If you want a solid sushi dinner in a restaurant where your shoes don’t stick to the floor and the food, all the food, is reliably good and served correctly, then go to your regular establishments. Consistency and taste...

Went on a Sunday here before catching a movie. It, did not look busy as the place was not even half full. We ordered 1 bowl of ramen, 2 sushi rolls, and summer rolls. It took over 30 mins to get the food out. The summer roll appetizers came out at the same time as everything else.

First, the service. The waitress never checked on us after taking our order, not even for refills. My family owned an upscale Chinese restaurant and steakhouse, and the service here is laughable for how much staff was there. We kept looking back, to see her just refilling soy sauce bottles and wrapping silverware. We had to politely ask another waitress why our food was taking so long. She said the ramen takes a long time to prepare… This was an obvious lie, I’m Asian btw and you don’t make ramen from scratch and made to order even at ramen only establishments.

Next, the food. The ramen topping toppings were all cold. My noodles were clumpy and stuck together. The meat texture was off. The summer rolls were a joke. The noodles seemed premade and made in batches. The texture of those noodles were like overcooked instant ramen noodles left out in the open all day. For some reason, they cut the summer rolls in half which I only assume is for “presentation”. Every time you picked them up, they would fall apart because of how loosely wrapped they were. So dipping them in any sauce just caused the contents to fall out everywhere. Overall taste if the food is average at best. Not good, not bad. My take away is the chefs were trained to follow instructions but had not real experience cooking Asian food. So, the execution and assembly of the dishes threw everything off. If I was waiting over 30 mins, I’d expect things to be very on point.

3rd, price is way too high for the level of service, serving size, and quality of food. We asked if we could pay when we got the food cause at that point all food came out about at the 45 min point. The waitress left one of the hand held credit card machines which made it awkwardly difficult to not choose anything else than a 20% tip. Paid the tip and we left. If you want good Asian food in the triangle, there are many better...

We went here when it warm opened and we’re happy with the food quality and service. Fast forward to Friday evening 6pm.

We were planning to go to Firebirds but didn’t have a reservation and it was a 2 hour wait. Remembering our good initial experience we walk across to CO.

First, it was humid and warm. Which normally is fine but it was a little too warm. Restaurant was about half full. Our server wasn’t great; he was slow and talked like he had dip or marbles in his mouth. Just there to take our orders. Whatever it’s fine.

I ordered the green papaya salad add chicken, and it was gross. Shredded cabbage, some carrots, and shredded, cold, canned super salty chicken. I have a broad and eat pretty much everything and this was unpalatable. I tried eating the salad that was also supposed to include peanuts, jalapeño, and… papaya… it was mostly cabbage and a fish sauce based sweet dressing. I told the waiter I couldn’t eat it and ordered a Korean bbq rice bowl to replace. They did take the salad off our ticket, and I appreciated that.

When the bowl arrived it had a fried egg on top- similar to bibimbap, but the whites of the egg weren’t cooked and it was just slimey. At this point I just ate around the egg.

Where things got gross is the server brought a fresh glass of water for my kid, and was like “I wanted to make sure you didn’t run out” but there was a hair and some cabbage/lettuce/paper floating on the bottom of the glass.

We were ready to go at that point and the server brings out a clover credit card processing machine then and there, and the tip options were 20, 25, and 30%. I dropped it down to 15% in front of him, and he … chuffed? Grunted? Huffed? It was weird. The whole experience was weird and a little gross…

Definitely falling into the curse of that location...