I Heart Bento — Restaurant in Ensley

I was really excited to try this place because the reviews and photos of the food are great. Unfortunately, we didn't find our experience aligned with other reviews.

Website menu: would not load so it was hard to preview the menu before going to the shop. Don't know if their website was having an off day or what, but anytime I tried to open the menu to enlarge it, it wouldn't load. Not-so-fun fact: their menu is also not on their Facebook page.

Location: location was fine. There are some other coffee places and restaurants nearby. Kind of regret not trying those instead.

Food: Pretty to look at. The bento boxes look very impressive and I was even more excited to get mine after seeing another customer with one. I ordered the teriyaki tofu bento. I don't know what sauce was on the tofu but it couldn't have been teriyaki. I kept getting such sweet notes from it, very orangey tasting with minimal soy flavor. Honestly, I couldn't help thinking of the saucy bit in a peach pie - it was oddly congealed like a fruit pie gets. I didn't try the seaweed salad because in prepping the meal, that sauce was also over the seaweed salad. Those are usually rehydrated anyway so I don't think I missed much there.

There was a pickled cucumber side, which I think is supposed to be sort of like a cucumber kimchi but it was a sweet pickle. No spice to it at all and the sugar flavor was much stronger than the vinegar taste of the pickles. Just not really good. The rice was great and I'm thankful the meal came with two scoops because that's about all I ate of it.

Boyfriend got the Korean BBQ bowl, minus the avacado. It was essentially bibimbap but they don't have gochujang, only Sriracha. He felt similarly about the cucumber pickles in the dish and the kimchi was more of a white kimchi. No real spice.

We also ordered the dumplings - I forget what they were called - jiaozi? I thought surely those couldn't be bad. They were pretty basic. No seasoning at all.

And service. The girl that took our order could not have been less engaged. She asked if we wanted to order and when we said we needed a moment with the menu, she just sat down and started playing on her phone. No excitement for the restaurant, no offers of suggestions or questions to be answered if we had any, nothing beyond taking our order whenever we decided we might be ready. Though after our experience with the food, I guess I understand the lack of enthusiasm.

And cleanliness - the floor was sticky with every step we made and the tables were pretty dirty too. We both commented on how they seemed busy with to-go orders and we're surprised the tables and floors were as dirty and sticky as they were.

Will def not be back to this one. The food was...

Came here today at lunch time and got Korean bbq and honeydew milk tea with green tea jelly. It was really good and great customer service. The honeydew wasn't the same honeydew that I usually get at other places. Its pretty much the same honeydew taste across the board except for this place. It has more of a floral taste. It was still really good though but I would probably call it a different name with floral flavor or something. I would have given 5 stars except when I came back to get another boba to get buy 1 get 1 half off, the lady was rude. I called ahead of time to order because my first visit I ordered at the store it took 25 minutes to get just 1 boba done. There was only 1 girl (very sweet) working at the front at the time and there were people that showed up to pick up their food so I didnt hold that against her. So when I called to order I asked if they had the buy 1 get 1 half off and the girl said yes because it was between 2-5 (I spoke with the dark skinned lady). She gave me a total of about $8 thinking they will discount it when I get there. I didnt realize they only do that Monday to Friday until after I got to the restaurant. There were 2 girls in the front which looked like they were just standing there. I went to try to pay for my order and they still havent even made it yet. So the girl which seems like the manager asked the dark skin girl to go make it. It seemed like she was new. And it seemed to me that she knew the deal was only mon to fri but maybe forgot and failed to mention it until I got there. The other girl took over. When I asked about the deal, she says they only do it mon-fri and I said the other girl said it was half off and she says OK with a snarky tone and attitude. She didnt even say "sorry for the misunderstanding". I said the only reason why I ordered 2 was bc of the deal. She says I can take it off since she hasn't made it yet....(why hasn't she made it yet?) I said ok. But i decided not to buy it. If that girl wasnt so snarky I wouldve just purchased 1 at least. The girl on the phone was nice though. The other one with the short black hair, not so much. There is a much closer place to get boba for me so I would not come back just bc of 1 bad experience. But thanks for...

We came here last Friday night after seeing some pictures on google and deciding it looked good. Cute little place when we walked in, but nobody was there to greet us. We decided to grab a couple of menus and sit down to decide. After about 7-10 mins we walked back to the front, nobody greeted us still but we heard a few teenage voices from the back laughing and talking. We coughed and shuffled and tried to make our presence known.

After waiting a few minutes nobody came, but I didn’t want to call out through the curtain or be rude, so I ended up just calling the place that way they heard the phone ring. Someone eventually came to the front after hearing the phone ring and took our order, covering her mouth while chewing food. Our bobas were brought to us, and the boba pearls were not even cooked all the way 😂 you would think for a place that strongly advertises boba AND has a sister store that sells boba, they wouldn’t be hard and undercooked. I didn’t want to be a pain and bring it up to them so we tried to brush it off. They didn’t bring out our meals together, so I sat and waited about 5 mins while my bf ate his. The “salad” was just lettuce with sauce. No other toppings. The sushi was pretty good. Other customers came in and were greeted quickly, unlike we were. Overall, the workers were polite but crappy service, food was alright, and the undercooked boba sucked. Wasn’t...