Umai Sushi & Hibachi — Restaurant in Grayslake

UP AND COMING! The space is odd. It’s enormous, and has two gigantic circular bars. One by the entrance that appears to be in service, and another close to the kitchen that is not in use, and had what appeared to be construction debris on it. The layout of the restaurant itself seems to cut through the building on a diagonal plane, but in a bit of a dogleg. I can only imagine the bit closest to the employee entrance is the hibachi area in which we did not enter. We were seated in the area between the two bars, but to the side. Along the wall is a food bar which had a self serve miso soup station… That was new. Unfortunately, the soup there was also pretty weak and didn’t have a lot of flavor. Our order of sushi was simple: Unagi sushi, a spicy tuna roll, yellowtail roll, a rainbow roll, and something called a pop up roll… All were absolutely delicious! The pop up was new for us. Loaded with flavor and good texture. The rainbow and spicy tuna roll are pretty much staples for our sushi order and we were quite satisfied with both appearance, and taste. The yellowtail roll was also a dynamo! It seems lately that many sushi restaurants have strayed from tradition and maybe spend an hour showing folks how to roll a maki roll and the resulting quality leaves the consumer with rolls that are falling apart; not here. Everything seemed in good order and well prepared. I’m no expert, I’ve never been to Japan, but for the tinkerer sushi consumer, Umai gets it done quite well enough. I knocked the interior a bit, but I imagine that in a few months or maybe even weeks, they’ll get the space sorted out, make a few tweaks and it will end up being a hot spot! Definitely would recommend, so get in...

Having been to Kawa many times in the past, it appeared to be an excellent choice for a night out. On this last occasion however it seemed as though the service and food quality had dropped dramatically. Not only was our waitress incredibly inattentive, often chatting with the other waitresses for minutes at a time while we we quite obviously waiting for service. When the food finally came the order was missing items that she claimed we hadn't ordered. The experience became exponentially worse when we actually began to (attempt to) eat our salad, sushi, and sashimi. The salad was brown and something was very wrong with the dressing, it seemed to separate into its component parts and had an odd odor. The fish all had an incredibly slimy and almost rotten texture and aroma, not to mention very sloppily plated. Even the such a simple thing as an asparagus roll was very off, the vegetable was far from fresh, being quite woody and flavorless. Unable to finish more than a few bites of this horribly butchered dining experience we asked to see a manager. To put it bluntly he was a pompous figurehead. He insisted everything was so very fresh and well prepared, when it was obviously not. A piece of sashimi should not have a layer of snot dripping off of it. He became very defensive about it all and was bordering on offensive to us. He offered to take a small percentage off of the bill after much deliberation. Not wanting to spend any more time in the place we paid and left, suffice to say that after many years of frequent patronage and recommending Kawa to friends and family, we will not be returning nor suggesting anyone else...

I absolutely don’t recommend this place for dine-in or all-you-can-eat. If you’re expecting a true ‘all-you-can-eat’ experience, think again. The staff was beyond rude, and the entire experience was awful—I felt harassed the entire time. From the moment we sat down, they hovered around our table, constantly staring at us and making us feel uncomfortable. My friend and I ordered a reasonable amount of food, yet they acted like we were doing something wrong.

Things only got worse. In the middle of our meal, they began to harass us even more, hovering closer and pressuring us to eat faster. Then, they suddenly brought out our ice cream while we were still eating our main course, forcing us to rush through the rest of our food before it melted. And if we didn’t finish all of the ice cream? That would have been another extra charge. It felt like they were setting us up to fail just so they could squeeze more money out of us.

Then, as we were still eating, the manager came over again to remind us that we had to finish every single bite, even the smallest rice scraps. As he spoke, bits of food were flying out of his mouth and landing on our table—absolutely disgusting. Who would want to keep eating after that?

And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the manager returned before we were even finished to threaten us with an extra charge for leaving a few grains of rice on our plates. At this point, it was clear they were just looking for any excuse to charge us more. The way we were treated was completely unacceptable. The staff ruined what should have been an enjoyable meal. Do yourself a favor and avoid this place...