Kai Lounge – Sushi Bar & Kitchen — Restaurant in Huntington Beach

I walked by this spot countless times when I was at Pacific City and finally decided to check this spot out for my birthday celebration with my friends. Reservations were easy to make online via Resy and I was lucky enough to secure a reservation for a group 7 on the day of. The interior is super gorgeous and serves as a great date night spot or girl's night out. We were seated by the hanging cherry blossoms so that made the birthday experience even better. Our server was very well versed in the menu offerings and was able to help my party make decisions on what to order. My friend bought a cake to celebrate my birthday and they did not hesitate to put the cake in the fridge. They were also very sweet and gave me a complimentary sorbet for my birthday. Food came out quickly and flavors were on point. I would definitely like to come back and try out their omakase and their other menu offerings.

|| L O C A T I O N / P A R K I N G || -Located on the upper level of Pacific City, across from The Bungalow. -Parking Garage entrance on Pacific View St. -2 hour Parking validation provided by the restaurant

|| F O O D / D R I N K S || A5 Wagyu Meatballs - These were so flavorful and tender.

Black Angus Shaking Beef - Generous amounts of beef and super flavorful. I didn't really need the sauce that came with it.

Pork Belly Fried Rice - Decent amount of pork belly.

Blue Crab Hand Roll - so fresh! Generous amounts of blue crab!

Hashbrown Cut Roll - I regret forgetting to take a photo of this but this was my favorite roll of the night. You would be surprised that crispy potatoes work well cream cheese, blue crab and spicy tuna. Highly recommend!

Crunch Roll - I like that instead of using imitation crab meat, they actually use blue crab, so this was a delicious treat!

Salmon Delight Roll - Yes, we got another roll with blue crab but this time with salmon and avocado on top. So delicious and fresh!

Grilled Peach Old Fashioned - If you like that smokey flavor in your drinks, you have to get this! I felt like this tasted stronger than my green tea old fashioned.

Green Tea Old Fashioned - I loved the idea of green tea infused bourbon and I felt like the drink was executed well! I wasn't looking for a sweet cocktail so this was nice!

Purple Rain - Definitely on the sweeter side but still refreshing!

Berries n Cream - This one was like a dessert! Tasted so...

Delicious culinary experience- spicy edamame, hamachi Kama, pork belly friend rice, HB roll, hamachi nigiri, and Japanese A5 Wagyu! Everything was perfectly flavored, tempered, portioned, and aesthetically pleasing. I love passion fruit so the Passion drop cocktail was an easy pick. It was very sweet so I could only drink one but I enjoyed it. The restaurant was nearly empty so the energy was low however it was clean, comfortable, and simply decorated. Looking forward to the implementation of the private space. Service is the biggest opportunity (threat) to focus on. If the team invested the same amount of engagement, focus, and time delivering the Kai experience that they do on their mobile devices, this place would be extremely high value for price paid, and the dining room would be packed with guests. Literally, all 7 associates on the dining room floor were observed constantly engaged with their mobile devices thus, we had to walk over to ask to order drinks, appetizers and again, for the check. They lack natural hospitality (care for others), do not possess an elevated restaurant service skill set, and no genuine desire to connect with guests and share the Kai dining experience. Servers and assistants need to know the correct seat to drop dishes and take pride in presenting the dishes. One, there is a “ouu and ahh” factor when the entire table feasts their eyes on the dish which creates a visual memory of what to order next time. Second, so there is no mixup on whose dish it is. In our situation, the rolls were just dropped on one end and we had to figure out what the roll was, who ordered it, then passed the partially eaten roll to the right recipient. Anyway, I pray the leadership can inspire, train, and recruit the right team members to keep Kai open. The culinary team is fantastic, maybe have them spend time with the front of house to transfer some of their spirit, pride and passion for the menu they produce so it shows up when these servers speak about the menu, present the dishes, and desire to know how the guest feels about the total experience so that they can relay the voice of the customer to continuously improve the overall experience, build and retain loyal guests, and increase the teams prosperity. Sending good vibes and wishes for...

Very poor service waiter never came to wait on us more than twice we had to call her over after an hour we had reservations and weren’t seated for 20 minutes although there were multiple tables open, we kept watching our waiter interacting with everyone but us after an hour and a half we got our appetizers and it was cold and stale because it was a fried dish and the miso soup was gritty and very salty and cold ,then after another thirty minutes asking the waiter what taking so long she tried to tell us that the sushi chef was leaving if we wanted anything else and we said no so they did give us the omakaze on the house but it wasn’t the full dish then finally after another 30 minutes we got our two sushi rolls but they were plain and not what was advertised and the waiter never came back so we weren’t able to get any condiments and then we still had to flag her down to get the check. The validation for parking wasn’t for more than two hours so we had to still fight to get free parking as advertised due to us being over two hours. The manager never even came out to apologize although the waiter told us she spoke to the manager. All in all the worst experience. Price was awful as well for what we received. Will not be recommending this spot to anyone. If I could put zero stars I would. Very...