Red Bowl Port Orange — Restaurant in Port Orange

My go to spot for sushi lunch in Port Orange is usually Wasabi Bowl, but since it was nearly impossible to make a u-turn on the main stretch during the lunch rush, I'd started to frequent Red Bowl. Situated behind the new Mellow Mushroom off of Dunlawton, Red Bowl's convenient location and great lunch special prices are what drew me in. Unfortunately, my experiences with their pickup ordering have been less than stellar.

I have never been able to successfully order a lunch special sushi from their website; the pop up asks you to select which two sushi rolls you want and whether you want salad or soup, but even after making the selections, the order button continues to stay grayed out. When they first opened this location it was hard to get them on the phone, as well, but I have had better success calling in orders recently.

My order is NEVER ready when they say it will be. I have called in and picked up orders three or four times now, and each day I show up on time, I end up waiting for my food. Today I remembered this and showed up late, and I still had to wait 5 to 10 minutes. The purpose of calling in an order is that it is ready ahead of time, so that I can pick it up and head back to work as quickly as possible; this is continually a very frustrating process at Red Bowl.

The sushi itself is decent for what you pay; $7.99 for their lunch special for two rolls and a salad or soup. The sushi isn't stellar but it hits the spot, and both the salad and the soup are about on par with what you'd expect from a restaurant of this type (ginger dressed salad, miso soup). Today I ordered an avocado roll and a sweet potato roll, both of which were still warm when I got back to my office and ate them.

Bottom line: If you are looking for sushi that is somewhat better than Publix, priced well and you are willing to wait, give Red Bowl a try. If you're looking for great sushi and exceptional service, I'd probably give one of the other three or four local establishments a try. Now that they have added a u-turn lane on Dunlawton, I don't see myself favoring Red Bowl over Wasabi...

We heard this chain was pretty good in other locations, so decided to try it while in Port Orange. What a mistake! We arrived at 12:30pm on a Saturday and there was only one other table with customers. We were seated promptly, but it was more than 10 mins before anyone stepped into the area and came over to see us. (We were already having the discussion about walking out at that point.) Once waited on, we ordered beverages and food at the same time. We had a very hard time understanding the waitress because she was soft spoken and had broken English. While waiting for food to arrive, we saw a small cockroach crawling across the floor. Because the floors looked reasonabley clean, we figured that was not a deal breaker...it happens at restaurants. Our food arrived quickly and was nice and hot. The bento box was pretty good and plentiful, although not all items were the best tasting Asian food we ever ate. The boneless pork spareribs entree was not that great...chewy cuts of meat with lots of fat, and the sauce was non-traditional and tolerable, with a tomato-based flavor. The clincher for us was watching the server stand behind the counter for a good 60 seconds, looking at her image in her cell phone, and picking her nose over and over. (I have a pictures to prove it!) She didn't wash her hands after that and headed to another customer's table. Overall...never going back to that location again. May or may not try another location that we heard good...

I rarely post reviews but I'm so tired of these restaurants skimping on quality, t's enough we're being overcharged, cmdelivery fees the driver only gets MAYBE $2-3.00 of (& who you then want to tip) upping their prices all the while downgrading quality, they just don't give a damn about putting out good food! Not expecting Iron Chef but come on - friggin try! The lemon chicken was so heavily floured it was like eating a chicken zeppole, puffed fried flour diced chicken looked like rabbit pellets, not even a full chicken breast & the "lemon" sauce in a small plastic container? Duck sauce with a slice of lemon tossed in - no lemon taste AT ALL. The scallion "pancakeS" was just 1 very small pancake/think small tortilla. I've tried this place a couple of times in the past forgot I wasn't a fan because of every disappointment & I was desperate for delivery, hoped over time it would've improved but it's hasen't & won't, you'd think these places would want to produce better but they blame prices, employees, everyone & everything but their lack of care & greed of what they put out there, just banking on ignorance & desperate hunger from those that don't know what basic/decent Asian cuisine should even taste like. Buy yourself some simple Asian cuisine ingredients _ keep meat thawed & cook it yourself. This place is taking your $$$ &) but IS NOT producing quality Asian cuisine that you're paying for &...