kodo — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Went to Kodō last night with a group of friends, and was really disappointed in our experience. The food was excellent and everyone except our server we were very impressed with. However our server made our experience exceptionally horrible to the point we were even concerned about our physical safety. From our initial interaction with Jesse J. it became a topic of conversation at the table about how uncomfortable he was making us, and how rude he was being when we were asking him for very basic things. Many of us at the table had experience serving, so we were questioning if there was some reason that he may be acting this way towards us.

Every interaction with him was a point of altercation. I will not go into detail on each but I will include a couple of the more impactful here. At one point, one of the items we ordered we had to send back because it contained an ingredient that was not listed on the menu but the orderie was allergic to. We tried to be very polite about the situation and apologized, we told him that we weren’t aware of this ingredient, because it was not listed, and we she saw a photo on Yelp which is what she thought she was ordering. To which he responded that this is a high-end restaurant that changes their menu seasonally we should’ve known that the item wouldn’t still be available. He went into a lecture on professional chefs and menus but his statements were fictitious. He was just belittling us. Both my parents and sister are professional chefs. I’m very familiar with the profession but I did not want to incite further conflict but I was really upset that he would go that far to make us feel bad when there was just a allergy. But before he left, he took it even further, he even went as far to say, “Well will someone at the table eat this because otherwise, I’m gonna have to throw it in the trash.” We felt really uncomfortable and tried to make light of the situation and we said, “Isn’t just going back to the kitchen?” He quickly responded, “No, it’s going straight in the trash.” While it may be true it just made the experience really uncomfortable. As someone who’s worked in the service industry, putting the burden on the guest, especially for something like an allergy is completely inappropriate.

When it came time for the tip, we gave him $25 on a $215 bill. Which was still overly generous, considering his inappropriate behavior he was lucky we tipped at all. Once we tipped him, he returned to our table and demanded an explanation for his tip. To be honest, I was very surprised that he would do this, as someone who’s worked as a server in high end restaurants, it is unfortunately common for people not to tip at all, even when the service is great. For us to have tipped him at all given his attitude, he should’ve been very grateful for. I calmly responded it was because of his attitude. He was unable to accept this. He continued to berate our group to the point, that we were all physically shaking, and worried that he was going to physically attack us. When he finally left, he said, “I hope you never come back”. This was an utterly horrifying experience.

Before we left, we were able to speak to the manager, Yugi. He tried his best to make amends. He offered us 50% off our next meal, and a free glass of sake to each of us in the group. If it wasn’t for this, our night would have been ruined. We still left very rattled but we are very grateful for Yugi. Because of how scared we were we aren’t sure if we feel comfortable coming back even with Yugi’s generous offer but we greatly appreciate the sentiment.

I was talking to my partner about this and he asserted that the waiter probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable to berate us to the point of being concerned about a physical attack if there was a guy there which is absolutely true. Women dining at this restaurant should be careful. It is somewhere that I wouldn’t feel safe at without some level...

Came to Kodō last night for a special reunion dinner with friends, looking forward to a fancy treat out. Unfortunately we would have been better off going to a cheaper restaurant due to the incredible shocking service we received from server Jesse J. Almost as soon as we were seated we began receiving extremely uncomfortable comments and remarks from Jesse in response to every question we had. For example, my friend asked for shared plates to which he responded “you literally have shared plates in front of you, that is what we use here”. He didn’t offer to grab extras or anything which we found strange. As the night went on he continued to make us feel as though every request was an extreme burden on him even though he rarely checked on our table, to the point we had to flag down another server to order and a manager to receive our check at the end. I won’t get into every instance as it would be too long, but another to touch on was that when sending back an item due to a food allergy that was not listed on the menu, the waiter loudly berated our friend to the point she was so embarrassed she was shaking, as he said repeatedly “this dish is going straight in the trash can then if someone doesn’t eat it.” The most shocking experience came at the end of the night, when we paid. Due to his aggressive attitude we tipped him about 12%, removing the 20% tip he had preselected. Given the amount of money we spent on the bill (almost $250), and rude service we felt 12% was more than generous to provide him. The server checked our bill and came back our the table demanding we explain why we tipped him so low. This was shocking to say the least. We explained it was due to his attitude and he continued to argue for over one minute about his attitude/the tip saying this is his livelyhood and he deserved more money. That alone is enough to appall any customer especially at a fancy restaurant! The icing on the cake was when he finally left our table after emabrassing us further saying “my apologies have a nice day” then muttering “I hope to never see y’all here again” under his breath as he walked away. We of course planned on talking to the manager as this was extremely inappropriate. Upon leaving we saw our waiter talking to the manager and as we walked past said “my manager wants to speak with you.” This was also awkward as we wondered why he told the manager to talk to US? The manager was thankfully very kind and understanding when we explained what happened and said he would be sending the server home. The manager also offered us 50% off our next meal with them if we would come back and said he would serve us personally and make sure that Jesse J. was not scheduled. He even went as far as to offer us a free glass of sake each which was extremely kind. We will be returning to give the restaurant another chance due to how amazing the manager handled the situation, if it wasn’t for him I would give one star but am adding one for his hospitality. I will certainly update this review once we return and have a new experience, but wanted to warn others as to this particular server especially when going to a restaurant of higher caliber such as Kodō. It is a treat to eat out, especially with friends you do not see very often, and it was disappointing to have such an abrasive experience that really did damper the rest of our evening. A note on the food is it was great, especially the oysters. The poke sushi roll was lackluster for the price along with the uni pasta, but overall it was tasty! Just really unfortunate how disrespectful...

Sit down, pass around menus and get forgotten with disappointing upscale Japanese food - but mostly the service kills this place. Too much money was spent on internal design, too little on investing in management or staff that understand hospitality.

Our experience was off to a rocky start when we were sat and the hostess said "here are your menus" and immediately walked away. I guess I was the table captain left to distribute the menus to our group of 5. Next moment worth highlighting was when asking about the Kurikara, described as eel liver and meat on menu. We asked to be told more about it and the server replied, "it's eel liver and eel meat" - I guess we can't read. The best we got after asking for more is that it was cooked over charcoal. We ordered a few dishes regardless to get us started on the first half of the meal but needed more time for drinks, asking for water in the meantime.

Water finally came, but the server failed to ask if we were ready to order drinks. Our first dishes came and our server hadn't returned so we finally asked another server to put in our drink order. Meanwhile water was out and we had to flag down for more, never was the staff proactive about filling water throughout the meal. Empty plates were left on the table very often, resulting in awkward placement of new dishes as they arrived - without each staff member clearing plates to make room. And even by the time we were 75% done the server never stopped by for more drink orders or more food orders, even though we said the first order was just to get us started. Fast forward to when we finally finished our food, we decided it wasn't worth ordering more as we were done feeling like unwelcome guests visiting distant relatives who think you are from the bad side of the family. The server finally realized we had ordered drinks and asked us what each of the cocktails were to add onto the bill which when it finally arrived at the table, of course took forever to come close out. We left and finished our dinner elsewhere. But not before getting scolded for asking for valet parking validation when the valet sign stated the price "with validation".

Don't waste your time here. Notice I didn't even take time on the food. Not worth even talking about though not terrible enough to give a 1...