Red Bowl Asian Bistro — Restaurant in Raleigh

Came here for the first time. The first thing the waitress said was that they were busy, which in all honesty they were, and she was doing her best. We ordered our appetizer and it was out within 10min, was delicious. I ordered the spicy Thai basil chicken and my husband ordered the bourbon chicken. We finished our appetizer and waited. The server came over and said our food is almost out. About five min later my dish comes out and she says "give me two min for the bourbon chicken". We said ok and waited, i did not want to start eating without my husband even though he kept telling me to eat, so we continued to wait....10min pass... server comes over apologizes and says foods almost out. 10 more min pass and nothing...At this point my husband tells me to eat before the food gets cold. I convince him to eat with me, the server sees that we are eating off the same plate, comes over and apologized for the delay and says someone had taken our dish so they had to redo it. Check the time, 40min had passed since I had received my dish and still nothing. We had both stopped eating at this point because the food was cold and honestly bland. We then tell the server to forget the oder give us a box and the check. At that moment my husband's dish comes out....50min later. The server was very apologetic and felt very bad and tried to explain. We told her we didn't need an explanation, just a box amd the check. She says 2 boxes, you have to pay for this one. I was very disappointed with the entire situation. I understand that they were busy, but I don't understand why it took almost an hour for them to "redo" the dish. And I don't understand why they would only take one dish out if the order was not complete. Anyways dont know why we brought the food, we didnt eat it anyway. Spent $52 on potstickers I guess. Definitely...

My husband and I have been dining here for almost a decade. It used to be one of our favorite places. We love the bogo sushi. We even had our wedding rehearsal dinner here about 8 years ago...but I feel it's gone downhill since the pandemic. The portions are huge for entrees, but lacking in flavor. I tried my daughter's chicken fried rice tonight and it was just bland. I tried my other daughter's spicy mango chicken and while it had more flavor, it was a bit watery. We ordered a ton of sushi for our large family and I could tell they rushed to make it so a lot of the rolls fell apart. I would have rather waited longer for sushi that was made well. My toddler's chicken nuggets was one of the best things I tasted tonight, and that's sad. I did like the appetizers we ordered. They were quite good...the Thai herb calamari and the jalapeno crab bites.

Also, after being a fairly loyal patron for a decade, I don't appreciate that gratuity has been automatically added to our check the last two times we dined here. They didn't used to do that. I firmly believe in tipping well for good service, but not having the choice of tipping and how much doesn't sit well with me.

I will say, our service tonight was good, despite it being a busy dinner shift. Our waitress was very sweet and very attentive. I appreciated her very much. But the forced gratuity has me thinking we will start looking for a new spot. $216 bill (with $40 in forced gratuity) for half rolled sushi and bland rice just ain't...

Once again, we have been disappointed by the management of this Red Bowl. At one point, we had stopped going there because we had gone on Mother's Day a few years back and management decided to capitalize on the "holiday" by having an outrageously priced menu to order from. We left, vowing to never patronize Red Bowl again.

Well, a couple of years passed by and we decided to try it again. For the last year, we have eaten there at least once a week, sometimes twice a week. Until yesterday, when we decided to stop in and have lunch. We placed our order and then the waitress disappeared for approximately 10 minutes. When she came back to the table, she informed us that the owner said we could only order off from the dinner menu, even though it was a Wednesday at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Apparently, once again, the owner/manager decided to jack up the prices of the meals in order to capitalize on the fact that it was New Years Day. So they lost our patronage for good this time. They were making a ton more money on our eating there once to twice a week than they would have made off from this one meal. Interestingly enough, the manager happened to be conspicuously absent during both of these incidents. I guess he didn't want to hear from his unhappy customers.

Poor business practice on their part. There's a saying out there, an unhappy customer will tell 10-15 people about their bad experience. I will definitely discourage anyone who asks me from...