Kura Revolving Sushi Bar — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

There's a few things that I would initially point out...

First, I recognize that this branch of Kura has just recently opened and maybe they have some kinks to work out.

Second, is we just returned from 2 weeks in Japan. So that might color my opinions on the matter. I'm trying to stay objective and not just presenting it as "oh, sushi is better in Japan".

The conveyor belt sushi restaurant is actually a really great way to experience sushi if you aren't familiar with it and I'm really happy to have one in Pittsburgh. We have been looking forward to this for months. Constantly checking to see when it would open

There's a conveyor belt that loops around the restaurant past your tables. You see something you like, you just grab it off the conveyor belt. The table will automatically track how may plates you've consumed and that is what primarily controls your bill. If you want something you're not seeing, or something that isn't normally on the conveyor belt, you just order it from a tablet and a second belt system delivers it to you.

On a fundamental level, Kura has delivered a fairly authentic experience and a lot of the dishes and preparations are similar to what you'd get in Japan.

But this is 100% a way, at it's core, you'd eat sushi in Japan. Nothing about the structure would be foreign to someone visiting from overseas. It makes sense, since Kura is a popular chain in Japan.

That said I had more problems than I had praise.

To start, there's a real consistency issue at play. You'll see certain dishes come through, for example the seared beef with yakiniku sauce, and the portion size varies radically. There were plates where the beef was about an inch or an inch and a half, and there were plates where the beef was easily twice that size and draped over the bed of rice.

Both of those plates would costs exactly the same amount despite you getting twice the meat on one. Sometimes the 'seared' beef was pretty heavily seared, other times it was essentially raw.

This wasn't a one off issue, I saw it plate after plate after plate. The size and quality of the preparation was all over the map.

I ordered a hot green tea, which I'd argue shouldn't be something you need to pay for, to have a luke-warm and half-full cup arrive at the table.

On more than one occasion, the rice wasn't properly molded and it fell apart when we were picking it up, which is not a good sign.

That's the other 'problem' directly related to the consistency issue is... at conveyor belt (or kaiten) sushi, you pay by the plate. And the plate lets you know how much something is. Or it's supposed to. Cheaper items are on one plate, medium items on another, expensive items on a third.

For whatever reason, this branch has one plate... everything on the main conveyor belt costs $3.65. Whether it's just rice and tofu skin (inarizushi) or it's sea urchin roe (uni).

At a Kura in Japan, inari would be one third, or one quarter the price of uni. Uni is just a more expensive ingredient.

So in an effort, presumably, to simplify things people are going to wind up wildly overpaying for simple and cheap sushi to subsidize the more expensive ones.

That's kinda broken.

Despite us not delving deep into any traditionally expensive sushi (no otoro, no uni), we still racked up $60+ per person.

We could have had two omakase courses from Kiku for what I paid for dinner.

That's the opposite of what kaiten sushi should be.

For sushi, consistency is key. Probably more than anything else. Kaiten sushi should be fun, but also an affordable way to enjoy sushi.

I didn't find either of those to be present during our visit.

We'll definitely go back, hopefully they work some of the rough spots out but my honest fear is they probably have the maximum amount of oversight from their corporate support structure right now. If they're all of the board at this time, I don't think...

We came for lunch on a weekday to celebrate my wife's birthday. She had been so excited to experience the conveyor belt sushi.

The hostess ignored us as we stood there while she made smalltalk with a server. After several minutes standing there while they discussed their weekend plans, we wondered if we were supposed to seat ourselves and started to do so before another waitress told us to talk to the hostess.

We go back up to her and she (seemingly annoyed we interrupted her conversation) eventually led us to a table and told us to put our plates in the slot and if we put in 15 plates we get a prize.

Without any further instruction, we assume we are supposed to wait for the conveyor belt to bring sushi. We waited for ten minutes before we saw anything at all, as dozens of empty foodkeepers pass us by.

Eventually, we see two plates of squid nigiri, which we were not interested in.

It was another five minutes before we see a dish of fish eggs in seaweed (forget what it was labeled).

Playing with the screen over our table, we ordered some water, which was delivered by an adorable little robot.

We saw some edamame on the belt, and in desperation, took our first plate. It was cold, and my wife thought it was… not great as far as edamame goes.

Another few minutes went by and we're looking around for a TV crew or something like we're on a prank show. There are people at other tables, but no sushi on the belt.

After close to 45 minutes of watching those first two plates of squid pass by, we finally saw some tuna nigiri. We took it and it was not bad. Then we watched a few hundred more empty plates go by.

By this point we've been here almost an hour and we've had a bowl of edamame and split two tuna nigiri (had one apiece).

We eventually realize we are probably supposed to order from the screen. The ordering process is easy enough, though we did sometimes end up with double orders without wanting them. (Upon review, it shows as two orders on the screen, but I didn't select two nor intentionally put in two orders, but I'm willing to assume I may have hit the button twice or something.)

When ordered, the sushi came pretty fast on another belt and it was pretty good.

We continued to special-order from the screen for the rest of our visit, watching the same squid nigiri go round and round on the belt.

We eventually did reach the 15 plate threshold, and watched a silly video play, but did not get a prize.

For desert, we ordered a taiyaki with icecream. After a minute, a bowl of sesame balls is conveyed to us. We checked the screen, and no, it correctly says taiyaki, so we call over a waitress and she says she'll get us our order.

After a while, a man comes out from the back with takoyaki. We inform him that our order was taiyaki, to which he got mad and blamed the waitress that messed up the order.

We return to looking for the TV crew as we wait for our order again.

Eventually it comes, and the taiyaki is pretty good.

We pay and my wife just wants to leave but I ask the hostess abut the prize thing on the way out. She holds up a bucket of prize-balls and we got a keychain.

Overall the food was fine, perhaps even good, but the service was awful, and I would not call it a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. They have a conveyor belt, and they have sushi, but throughout our entire visit there was never a single piece of rolled sushi...

This past Monday, my 5 friends and I attended Kura. This was not our first time at a capsule sushi place, and knew well ahead of time how pricy this would be, the wait time etc. Service was totally fine until a friend at my table ordered the shrimp tempura udon soup. She had one bite and immediately didn't like it. She kindly asked our waitress if she could take it off the bill, exchange it for another item of the same price or if someone else at our table just needs to eat it. The waitress immediately responded with "I'll take that back and let you know" then walked away with the soup that had one bite taken out of it. She never came back until we were ready to pay. We started to pay using our phones and noticed that the soup was still on there. Kura's mobile pay allows you to split the bill amounts yourselves so that's what we started to do with our party of 6. The mobile payment then timed out so only half of us could pay for our food. We then spoke to the waitress who said she couldn't reunf the soup because my friend had ate it, the supervisor eventually came and said the same thing. Please note that my friends and I have worked in retail and food before...we were APOLOGIZING to the waitress while this was all happening because we know there's only so much a server can do. We settled with getting another udon to go since we had paid for it but didn't eat it. Right after this we tried to pay at the register. I showed the receipt to the cashier and explained to her that we paid for half through the mobile app, it crashed, please split the rest of the bill. She looked me in the eye and said "okay" then swiped the card from my friend's hand. Turns out she DID NOT understand what I was saying and DID NOT split the bill. The supervisor was standing behind her, got too close to my face for comfort, and said "You should've clarified that you wanted it split before hand". At this point I quickly signed the receipts (that the cashier literally tossed at me btw) and got out of there fast.

I know this restaurant is new, I understand it is a gimmick and trendy and that they probably have had awful customers since opening with how popular it is. However, that does NOT give them an excuse to have such poor service and communication with their customers. This was my first time here and unfortunately, most likely my last. It's honestly a shame that the only capsule sushi restaurant in Pittsburgh, which I have been waiting since their first announcement to go to, has such awful service staff. Heres your warning if you bring a party over 2 and want to split the bill. Robot boy was hands down the BEST...