Kura Revolving Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Edison

I totally get and appreciate the novelty of conveyor-belt sushi. It's exciting watching the dishes glide by. You get to pick stuff that looks good, like a buffet, but you don't have to move - the food comes to you. And with the touchscreen at each table, you get to order anything from the full menu and it is delivered via a second conveyor directly to your table. Super cool.

However: (and these are big howevers)

It's expensive. We had lunch for 6 people (4 adults, 2 children) and the bill came to $310. Adding a tip brought it to $360. ($60 per person). That's about double what we would have paid on a weekend at an all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant. You pay $3.55 per plate, plus any extras (drinks, special orders, etc). But there's only a few bites on each tiny plate. It's not uncommon to eat 10-20 plates per person, and they add up.

The sushi is just not that good. I mean, it's fine. Not exceptional. Not inspired. Just fine. There's not a huge selection of either maki or nigiri either on the full menu, and there's even less on the conveyor. We had a few things that were not great (eg the takoyaki were uncooked inside). A few standouts: the wagyu nigiri was really tasty and has great smoky notes; the ramen broth is very tasty and a rival of other dedicated ramen restaurants.

You can't customize anything. Don't want the spicy mayo? Extra green onions? Allergic to sesame seeds? Too bad. There's no way to customize anything on the touchscreen. (Full disclosure, we didn't ask a human server, so maybe we could have gotten it that way )

The variety on the conveyor depends highly on where you are seated in the dining room. The plates are filled in the kitchen and progress in a line past every table without being refilled until they reach the kitchen again. Lowest-numbered tables eat first. (Maybe tip your host before being seated?).

• And there's no sashimi anywhere in the restaurant. So if you don't eat rice, you're pretty much SOL. *

Those are the biggest challenges i had myself.

A few other nits: the servers weren't as attentive as i would have liked, despite a dedicated call button on the touchscreen the touchscreen itself was sort of hard to access. High up above the table, it put the two people next to it responsible for the whole table's orders. tables fit exactly four. Don't try to bring a large group. They'll try to make it work, but it's not at all comfortable. In fact, the whole place is kind of snug.

I don't want the overall impression here to be incredibly negative. There's lots of positive here: the food is tasty, no challenges with cleanliness or decor. Everything worked - which is saying a lot given the amount of automation required to make this place work. And it's cute and clever!

Make sure you get the app to "virtually" get online otherwise you're facing 1-2 hours of waiting.

My takeaway is simple: if you like Japanese food are aren't picky about what you get (and don't have any food allergies), it's probably worth a trip for the novelty alone. But i suspect after you're done, you won't want a...

If I could give a 0 I would. I’ve been to multiple Kura sushi locations in Los Angeles and the Fort Lee location. They are all run so much better than this Edison location. The food is good but the staff is horrendous.

Curly pink haired girl was incredibly rude and yelled at a group of confused customers waiting outside for following the instructions that were texted to them. I’ve worked in food service before and can understand it’s stressful, but the way she was talking to people came off very rageful, like she was incredibly annoyed people were there. And forget asking her any questions. If you went inside to ask her your place in line or a general eta, she would get real upset and tell you to not come inside and wait outside until she’s ready. She was just standing at the bar hanging out, not talking about work(I overheard the conversation) and the 30 or so people waiting for any sort of Kura representation outside left in the cold.

Once inside after 3 hours and being texted with the same text 4 times to check in with the host. Good luck if you want a drink. It takes forever for that to happen. Absolutely zero sense of urgency from the staff besides the kitchen. They were amazing and pumped out food orders very quickly. But the front of house staff could not possibly care less. The average wait to get them to come to your table is about 10-20 minutes. When they do come, prepare yourself mentally for them forgetting to come back with what you asked, in this case it was just chopsticks.

If you’re splitting the check, guess what, you need to call a waiter. We called and waited 20 minutes just to tell them we wanted the check. We then had to wait another 10 minutes in an empty restaurant and just asked the next person we saw for the check, which they brought fairly quickly.

Unfortunately I brought 2 friends here for their first time at a Kura and i was excited for them to experience it for the first time. At the end of it they both agreed “thanks for the invite but I’m never coming back here, the food was great but I’ve never seen service this bad in my life.”

Overall, prepare to spend half your day here. It’ll take you 3 hours to get in. Another hour or so to eat, and about another hour or so of just waiting at your table to get any sort of assistance with drinks, soy sauce, utensils and finally the bill. Pro tip, if you get seated close to when closing time is, you better eat fast and order what you can. The staff does not care if you waited 3 hours and they finally seat you a minute before close, they will simply stop making food.

TLDR: food is good, staff is the worst I’ve seen in my life. Go to the Fort Lee or Jersey City location if you can. The drive is worth avoiding the...

This was my first time at a conveyor belt style sushi restaurant. Since this restaurant deems to be "automated" clearly new diners are not familiar with certain procedures. As soon as you walk in, you will see staff members running around and serving current diners. After standing around for about 10 minutes with no greeting or acknowledgement from staff, another group walked in. They were acknowledged and was told to go outside and sign in on device. How come no one told us that or why isn't there a sign indicating for us to sign in? When we finally signed in we were told that we cannot wait inside due to lack of space and that the current wait time was going to be really long. They'll text you too come back.

Fine. Went over to H-Mart to look around and spent about 20 minutes and went back to see our what status was. We were number 47 and when we checked they were at 55. Did not receive a notification or a text at all. Walked inside and the young lady asked what number are you, 47. Her reply "Okay, I guess I'll seat you'" Like it was such a chore to do.

Sat down, got a brief introduction of what to do and decided to explore the menu on the display. They had some decent selections some were pretty good and some what fresh. However, the consistency is lack their of. My colleague ordered a specific roll from the menu, which was pretty good mind you and we decided to order another one. The second batch we received was a complete mess and did not look like the first one. Sent it back and was informed that it was the right one which was very odd.

Lastly, lets talk about the conveyor belt. While the concept has been around many years. It's awesome how we can experience this in our area. Its about time we had this experience come into our neighborhood. My gripe with it is that was always EMPTY. Notice the attached video of it moving. Their were a one or two items on the belt but MAJORITY EMPTY. It seems like they either can't meet the demand or really don't care of the experience they are providing.

Thing is when it comes to something unique and new such as this restaurant. You have one chance to impress your customers. Obviously, if they have a great experience they will either come back and rave about the place or not come back at all. Hopefully this review allows the owners/managers address some of the concerns and fix them. For now, I might not return anytime soon until...