Kona Grill - Boise — Restaurant in Meridian

This Valentine's Day, my boyfriend and I had a reservation at Kona Grill in the Village. We got there early and waited in the front to be seated by the hostesses. Everyone who had gotten helped before us was sat down at a nice table. I don't know if it was random or what but when it came time for us to be sat down, our hostess walked us over to outside seating. I don't know if in our reservation when it said if we had any special requests, if I should've put, please sit inside, but I didn't even know they had an outside seating that is partially covered up. Earlier that afternoon, it started raining and by that time, it was very wet outside. Now, on managements part, or whoever was in charge Of the seating for the evening should've accounted for the weather and adjusted to it. Before the hostess went to sit us down at our table, she noticed that the mesh wall that separated us from the outside, kept being blown up against our table from the wind. She went over and moved our table, even closer to the tables around it. My boyfriend and I awkwardly tried to move into the cramped space as the hostess walked away. As we sit down, I'm instantly met with water on my seat, and on the table making my clothes wet. I go up to the front and I asked them if they can wipe down our table. One of the girls at the front does a really quick wipe down for us but it's still somewhat wet when she walked away. Our waitress comes by and asks how our evening is going and I decide this is our time to speak up. I let her know how we were feeling as we are getting wet from the mesh wall and the rain coming through it. She spent a few minutes trying to work out a way for us to be able to sit somewhere more comfortable, and was able to find a spot for us at the sushi bar. The sushi bar is a very cramped space and when we went to be sat down, there were already two groups of people on either side of our seats. The rest of the evening my boyfriend and I sat so close to each other that our thighs and arms were touching the whole time. We couldn't even get out of our seats to go to the bathroom without it being a big hassle for the people on either sides of us and the table behind us. We sat there for an hour and half, waiting for our food to come out. By the time we got our food we just wanted to eat as quickly as possible to get out of there from the frustration of the evening. I sat there and watched all the other couples getting sat down at nice and big tables and wondered how we could've gotten so unlucky. I understand how busy it can be on holidays however, this has got to be one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had. I'm a very patient person and I do not mind waiting when it is busy. However, knowingly, sitting people outside while it's raining and allowing them to get wet is wrong. The only reason I am even giving any stars is for how polite our waitress was, and how much you can tell she tried to make up for how poorly the evening was going. I am posting this review anywhere I can because I truly want Kona to hear my message that they need to stop over booking and sitting people outside when it's raining or other...

Honestly this was by far the worst dining experience I've had in years. 6 o'clock reservation for 3 people, we were checked in there at 5:50. Didn't get seated until 6:20 for our reservation while hearing walk-in guests being told it would be a 30 minute wait for them.

Our order was put in within 5 minutes of being seated and several menu items were already sold out for the night. No food arrived to our table until 8:45. Nearly 3 hours after our arrival to the restaurant.

Once the food arrived it was soggy in the case of a entree salad, cold in the case of macadamia nut chicken, and included the most overcooked piece of paper thin and dried out boot leather advertised as "prime rib" I've ever seen in my life (the surf and turf was sold out before 6pm, so it was just the prime rib.) Well-done doesn't even accurately describe it. It looked like it had been microwaved for 5 minutes AFTER being cooked to well-done. Dehydrated would be a better word.

The management wasn't even handling complaints at this point and sent the poor waitress lead to come talk to us, who didn't have any sort of authorization to do anything to remedy the situation. Finally got to talk to a manager and all they offered was to comp the prime rib and get us a replacement dish after another hour to hour and a half wait. What a disaster. So I'm supposed to wait 3 hours for dinner, then sit there for another hour and a half while the other two people at my table eat their meals so hopefully by 10pm after 4 and a half hours of waiting I can potentially get a decent meal that I'm expected to pay for?

Completely ridiculous that you can make a reservation somewhere that openly advertised a holiday menu with specific holiday operation, hours, and functionality to be entirely thrown to the curb for takeout orders and tables ordering multiple appetizers as meals.

A horrifically poorly managed evening, and on Christmas on top of it.

Seriously reconsider being open for the holidays. I can't even imagine how our poor waiter felt all night running around telling people it was going to be a 2 hour wait for food, there was no booze, and half the menu was already sold out by 6pm. Not to mention the half dozen appetizer orders that showed up to our table from other waiters on accident, which weren't ordered by us and were meant for someone else, and had to be run around to each table to be asked where they belong. How humiliating. This can only be considered terrible management and was embarrassing to your staff as well as your brand. As someone that goes to bars and restaurants for business purposes for a living, I certainly wouldn't be considering dining with any Kona Grill for any reason in the future if this is how they're run.

If I wanted 3 bites of lukewarm Mac and Cheese while waiting almost 5 hours for my Christmas dinner I would have made blue box and ate it in my pajamas on my couch while cooking my own prime rib and not having to deal with your emotionally beaten down staff awkwardly asking us if a refill of our drink would improve...

Went to Kona Grill for the first time with a couple friends and had a terrible experience. We got there at 4:30 on a Saturday and it was not busy. Drinks took a long time to start and we had to asked numerous times for refills which took too long that my boyfriend had to walk up to the bar twice to get a beer. I saw our waitress chatting up other employees and laughing in the meantime. We ordered the tempura spicy tuna roll and a medium ribeye steak to share. Our friends got a cucumber salad, pad Thai, chicken satay, and another salad. It took a long time for our order to come out. Our sushi roll that states it’s tempura, (meaning flash fried) was a very plain tuna roll with what my boyfriend thought was dorito dust over the top… not flash fried.. our steak wasn’t very warm, however it appeared to be cooked extra well done, no pink color, dried out enough where no juice came out. We waited a bit for our waitress to come back and check on us and politely showed her it was way over cooked. This was a $39 plate for a small steak and some bland fingerling potatoes, no additional side or anything. The server offered to have them make another on the fly and we reluctantly said ok. After seeing how lackluster everything else was we should’ve ordered something else but that wasn’t offered. She took back the same steak dish at the table next to us at the same time as ours. We were dumbfounded that two steaks were being sent back at the same time. She said “yeah, this happens a lot”. As if it’s normal for them to serve an overcooked piece of meat with no quality control. We waited another 25-30 min for our new steak and by then when we saw the waitress I told her that the wait was ridiculous for another and we were ready to leave. She apologized but didn’t offer us anything to go as a replacement or a discount on our meal. We were pretty bothered by the lack of hospitality, I worked in the service industry in college and would have never let my customers be treated like that. We had issues getting our check figured out and we were starting to run behind to an event we were going to. As I’m trying to pay on the machine, the manager came out to talk to us and just said “I’m sorry, I talked to our sous chef so that shouldn’t happen again”. She offered us NOTHING. I said we were very disappointed with our experience. I couldn’t believe someone at an upscale restaurant like that could butcher steaks right and left and still be there cooking on a Saturday night. The rest of the food that our friends had was not very good either they said. We were there for almost 2 hours and had terrible table service, food, and a poor example of hospitality. We weren’t rude to anyone, but had to be blunt. It was one of the worst experiences and we left hungry after splitting a small tuna roll. Just wanted to share before anyone goes and spends $70 on 3 drinks and a sushi roll… completely overpriced for...