Sushi Bistro — Restaurant in Ocala

First, let me start off by saying my family & I have been a customer of this restaurant since they opened. In the beginning years of opening the place was great. Great food, great staff, and a great atmosphere. However, I think the owner of the restaurant has gotten very nasty and rude as the years have passed. She literally acts like it’s an inconvenience or bother to her to serve her customers with respect and kindness. While there have been many other situations where she was rude, today was the worst!

We were seated by the owner at 8:34pm. We had two people from our party on the way still and the staff was very aware of that. Not even 15 mins after seating us, she was rushing us to get our orders in & asking how long the other quests would be. While we’re aware they close at 9:30 and it was an hour until close. There were also many other parties walking in left and right. She was not concerned with the amount of guests she had being seated only interested in rushing our orders in. That’s only the first encounter that caught me off guard. Shortly after the rest of our party arrived, we got our orders in. I personally told her 3 times what I wanted AND corrected my order with her twice. SHE STILL DIDNT CARE TO GET IT RIGHT. She did not have a paper and pen, or anything. She was very careless. Fast forward we finally get our orders in and she continues being nasty. Her tone of voice, the looks she was giving, and how she was handling us as customers was awful. We get our food and it’s wrong. We advised her one of our meals was wrong & we don’t know how that can be because we told her the meal three times to make sure this didn’t happen. She ROLLS HER EYES at us, sighs, and slams the rest of the plates down. While waiting on my meal to come out, my friend asked her for some yum-yum sauce. THAT HE HAD ALREADY ASKED HER FOR MANY TIMES BEFORE THAT. She proceeds to look at him and say with a very nasty tone “ I know I heard you and I’m getting it!” once again she comes out and slams the bottle of yum-yum sauce on the table. At this point all of my party is already almost done with their meals. My food THAT SHE GOT WRONG has yet to come out. It was so close to closing and we felt so uncomfortable with her service, I asked her to give me my food to go and I would like it taken off of the tab because we were done with the disrespectful service and the experience of eating at her restaurant was ruined. I was very respectful to her when I asked this too. This lady proceeds to RAISE HER VOICE AT ME AND STOMP OVER TO THE TABLE WHERE THE FOOD WAS AND KEPT REPEATING “no pay, no food” which I was perfectly fine with that BUT THE DISRESPECT SHE GAVE WAS NOT GOING TO FLY ESPECIALLY WHEN WE ALREADY HAD THREE CHECKS THAT WERE BEING PAID FOR. She just couldn’t accept the fact that someone was fed up with her bullshit. After she chose to be nasty and treat me as if I was her friend or child, I made the choice to get all the food packed up and get ready to leave AT THIS POINT WE WERE GOING TO PAY but she started making a scene once again saying “no pay, you can’t take food to go”. By then I was done and only two checks were paid for. We gave the guy who actually took good care of us a tip in the total of what the bill would have been, but I guess she will take that for her restaurant from what I’ve read in the other comments.

Been a customer of hers for 6 years, after tonight I will not step foot in that restaurant again. We’ve had enough with how rude she is getting. She acts very miserable to be there & take care of HER business. When in reality the people ordering this food and choosing to eat at her business is what keeps the money flowing in. Please read the one star reviews. They all report “rude staff” for a reason. This business will be coming to an end sooner or later with how she treats...

We traveled to Ocala over the Fourth of July weekend and decided we wanted sushi. I googled local places, read reviews (should have listened to my inner voice) and chose Sushi Bistro. What a mistake. At first, the male server was nice. We ordered tuna tataki as an appetizer. It was decent. I ordered a salmon skin hand roll and a dragon roll and my husband ordered the American dream roll and a spicy tuna roll. The order came out and I got a salmon skin sushi roll served instead of what I ordered (salmon skin hand roll). I politely told the server that “this was not what I ordered. I ordered a hand roll” and he looked at me and said “no you didn’t. This is what you ordered.” I then said “I’ve never ordered this in my life - I ordered a hand roll”. He then picked up my plate in a huff and about 8 minutes later returned with the Salmon skin hand roll and plopped it in front of me - and don’t you know… they took the chopped up salmon skin from the mistaken roll they made and shoved it in a seaweed cone. I was appalled. I took one bite, it tasted disgusting and just left it on the plate. The Dragon roll I ate was actually very good. My husband did not enjoy either one of his rolls and did not finish his plate as he always does. He said they tasted gross! Also, we asked for extra eel sauce three times before it finally came to the table and believe me they were not busy. When we got the bill and I was still charged for the salmon skin roll I asked him if the price was the same as a hand roll and he said yes. at that point I didn’t care cause I just wanted to get out of there because his attitude sucked and the entire dinner sucked. I never do this and I am embarrassed to say, however, we left zero tip. I told my husband, the salmon skin roll he left on the bill was his tip.

Please read the reviews of this place and take each bad one that you read into full account because I didn’t and that...

Very close to the Sushi served in NYC. My chicken was a hard and overcooked and dry, the side salad was only a bit of iceberg lettuce not a cherry or grape tomato and no cucumber with a lot of water at the bottom. I learned after so many years working in different kitchens that you should always serve food with pride and commitment and always make it look and taste good it's sad to see how some simple foods are so badly handled giving the customers a sad experience, I am going to give the another chance in the future to see how they will perform. For now they did a horrible job.. .Even though when you look them up online it says that mask are required to enter the business as I was waiting for my order about eight people came to pick up orders and only me and one delivery person were wearing the mask besides the staff. Server's were kind of rude taking my order not pleasant at all and when I said something in regards of them requiring a mask and the waitress just made a face and could not answer me back. So many people not using maks coming out of the restaurant is kind of scary 😫 not wonder why Covid-19 has high levels of contaminated people all over Marion County, trying to go back to normal but is a very scary site when you are trying to be safe but so many do not care about this...