Kotobuki Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Norfolk

This is not a place to go if you want to sit down and have Sushi. Multiple times before my wife and I have gone to sit and have sushi on a Friday or Saturday date night, only to be turned away because they were "operating at capacity" with three tables open. Short staffing, I understand that.

What is incredibly frustrating is the rate at which this restaurant will take online orders and other sources while letting the patrons inside sit on their hands. We were seated after standing in the lobby entrance for almost 10 minutes with multiple tables open. Once seated, it took almost another ten minutes to get drinks in, at which point we ordered an appetizer. So far things had been slow, but not egregious and we were generally pleased. Things came completely off the rails once we placed a sushi order in. We waited for ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes, waiting for two rolls for each of us. All the while, plate after plate after plate after plate of sushi appeared on the counter, backing up while our waitress was off elsewhere taking online orders seemingly. After almost 40 minutes of waiting, we enquired as to the status of our rolls. Only after asking, the waitress looked at the counter and noticed that one of the plates, which had been sitting there the best part of 20 minutes, was my order. She gave me my order, and told my wife that hers was still being worked on. After ANOTHER 20 minutes had gone by, we asked again as to what was going on. She then said that they were still working on the King Cobra Roll.. My wife did not order the king cobra roll, I had. She then realized that the other sushi chef had already made my wife's roll at almost the same time mine had been finished. So after over an hour and a half of waiting for two rolls for each of us, we got the check and left.

Again, mistakes happen but this was occurring for everyone. The staff were short and curt; the chefs were unhelpful in anyway to assist the waiters with the delivering of the food. To add insult to injury, we were seated at the bar, literally feet away from the chefs. Not once did they ask if we were waiting on a specific roll or try to be generally helpful.

If you REALLY don't want to go to Volcano sushi, which is literally a block and a half away that offers MUCH better in person service and all you can eat with similar quality food, place your order on DoorDash or whatever food service you use and pick it up to go. Those orders apparently have...

My son and I went to this place the day after mother's Day as his gift to me. When we walked in there was no hostess, so I asked the sushi chef if we seat ourselves which he didn't seem to understand the question,absolutely fine. Once we were seated we waited another 15 minutes before I had to ask if we could at least order some drinks. Our drinks were brought over and the waiter left, didn't ask if we need anything else or if we ready to order. Again I call the waiter over to ask if we could order some appetizers. My son and are talking and I realize that it is 7:50 an hour since we arrived and we still had no food. Around 7:20 or so a group of people came in and with in about 25 minutes of them being seated they were actively enjoying their food the whole table. I went up to the woman who owns the place and quietly told her the situation. The first thing out of her mouth was not I apology about that, but was excuse why our food was taking so long, so when I pointed out the table that came in after us and had a bigger party then us was already eating, that clearly upset her and she immediately starts coming at me in an hostile manner asking if I wanted her to just cancel the order. This is a Monday at 8 pm no I don't want to cancel my order I just wanted to understand why we didn't have it. This owner was so unprofessional. I am a business owner my self I own a very successful pet grooming salon in Norfolk "Queen of the paws" I absolutely pride myself on giving the best customer service and if you look up our reviews you will see our costumer service is unbeatable. I know being in a business you can and will never be able to please everyone, but at the least you can make everyone feel like their feelings mattered and they are a valued human being. Needless to say I will never come back to this restaurant. I will never suggest anyone come to...

Losing their touch.

This was our favorite sushi restaurant before the pandemic. The mother and daughter were extremely kind, and the quality of sushi was absolutely worth the price. Once, when I described a poke bowl that I had enjoyed from Hawaii, they created a bowl on the spot for me to compare to that to which I described - then didn’t even charge me for it!! Unfortunately, since then, their wait staff is missing the mark.

One of the most beautiful details of this restaurant is its Japanese style seating where you remove your shoes and sit “in” low to the floor. Yesterday when I arrived, I was greeted and when I asked if we could sit at one of these tables, the waitress answered with a hurried “No, it’s closed.” Strange, but not a deal breaker. But then when she came back to our table after a lengthy time to get our initial order, I could see that the wait staff had changed significantly since we had last been here. They had plenty of staff, but they were all huddled behind the service bar away from the customers and didn’t have a system for receiving orders (our waitress, after having seated us and then returning roughly 10 minutes later, asked us if we had been helped yet).

Our meal took about 30 minutes to be prepared, came without what we had asked for, and utensils weren’t present at meal delivery (because our waitress wasn’t checking in frequently we sat with our food trying to wave someone down in order to get utensils).

The food itself was tasty and very well prepared. The quality of ingredients is always top notch and will convince you that the extra $5 per roll was well worth it.

This place used to be fantastic, but missed the mark for us yesterday. I’ll of course be back, but I’ll be hoping for the same caliber of food, with a better...