Shiso Crispy — Restaurant in Saint Petersburg

• long review disclaimer *

So my bf & I come to St. Pete often to visit family & we’ll go explore places to eat and things to do. I came across Shiso Crispy, thought it looked cool & yummy after looking at the reviews, pictures and menu. So I decided we give it a try. *note: we went at about 12:30pm, an hour after they opened, so it wasn’t too busy.

We get there and the outside is nice, wheelchair accessible through the front door, with a small ramp although that’s as far as you could go with a wheelchair or other possible physical issues with stairs as you have to go through the building to a back door and down some stairs to get to a food truck.

When you walk in the place is decorated nicely, beautiful on the inside. Seating; two tables on the patio and a handful of tables inside. There was a bathroom to the back left and then a back door that leads you to where you can order or pick up. My first issue was that there was only one sign that you could miss very easily above the door that said “order/pick up here”. So if you’re like us and this is a new place that you’ve never been to & decided to try on a whim, you have to guess where to go. There isn’t anyone inside to direct you and no sign that is eye level leading you to the back door.

We go out the door and down some steps to a very nice set up of high tables/stools, umbrellas, lights, music and the food truck. It is indeed a nice vibe upon first glance. We walk up and look at the menu, decide what we want and get closer to the window. 2 out of the 3 people working in the truck see us, one is busy cooking (the 1st person) one is packing orders preparing food to go ( I’m guessing the owner/ manager) and the third is the one who takes the orders. We had to wait for a few minutes until we were even acknowledged to which the guy packing orders/ possibly the owner, says they’ll be right with us. All the while the person who takes orders has their back to us, knows we’re there and apparently grabs a dumpling, clearly wants to eat it, debates on whether to eat it or take our order and opts to do BOTH… that was another issue with this experience. They ask what we would like, takes a bite and answers the few questions I have around the mouthful of said dumpling. I have never been here before and I even say that, the only thing they said is that the rice portions are shareable and are about 2 lbs of food. At this point my bf is very upset because this person has barely acknowledged him and he now doesn’t even want anything atp. That whole interaction from waiting, ordering, to paying was very upsetting. We pay with cash, the person has now put on gloves and takes our cash with the gloved hands and we have no idea if there was another glove change after handling the money. It would have been better to handle the transaction first, then put gloves on to handle food imo. We go to the side to wait where there are a few other people waiting or eating at the tables.

I will say a plus was that the food came pretty quickly. I ordered the bang bang chicken and dirty rice. Grab my food and we choose to sit in the very front at the tables outside on the patio. The first initial bite of food was a nice pop of flavors, but unfortunately there was a lot of sweetness that kind of threw me off the more I ate. The rice was sweet, the bang bang sauce was sweet and the gyoza or the other sauce on the chicken was sweet. I didn’t get anything else to try but the other items did look yummy.

Overall, I was excited at first, then disappointed and displeased with how the customer service went. The biggest issue was the eating while taking my order & lack of the customer service. The people who came up behind us got a warmer & much quicker welcome than we did, which I don’t understand why. It took some time. We didn’t get a “hey guys welcome in,” or something along those lines. I understand being busy with orders/cooking but a little interaction with your customers when they first arrive goes a long way. That way we know you see us and care about that aspect of...

I ordered the Bang Bang Chicken Dirty Rice and Pork Gyoza last week, and it was by far one of the worst meals I've ever. I checked the reviews of this place again after I visited, and no wonder why it has such high reviews. It appears that the owner offers free food in return for removing 1-star reviews. There were a few of those that I noticed, but who knows how many 1, 2, or 3 stars reviews that were already removed because of this.

On the food itself, Pork Gyoza was $12 for 7 pieces. I obviously wouldn't have minded the price, had it been a decent value, because I obviously selected it... but when I heard the "thump" of frozen dumplings going straight from the freezer to the grill, I started to have a little bit of a doubt. I'm still giving the benefit of doubt at this point, but I know from experience that dumpling straight from the freezer to a heat source does not keep the same texture. Keep in mind... there is nothing wrong with a business using frozen dumplings. In fact, it is often expected at many places, but $12 for 7 pieces is much higher than many comparable restaurants. Looking at inside the dumpling, I'm pretty sure they were at least NOT store-bought, but at this price range and their Facebook posts, I was expecting that they keep less inventory and not freeze them. Frozen or not though... that was absolutely not the worst part by far! Whatever sauce(s) that they put on top of these dumplings had one of the weirdest and unpleasant texture and odor. Smell was almost had a "plastic-like" odor and texture was so slimy, and not like a regular kind of syrup (or whatever it really was) they might've mixed in. I ended up throwing out the food after having 2 dumplings (I hated it after the first one but I was hungry after work, but I just couldn't do it).

Moving on to the Bang Bang Chicken Dirty Rice, what happened to the rice? I get that this is supposed to be "fusion" and I get that it is dirty race, but this is not it. How many weird sauces overlayered does it take to create a culinary disaster? Sauce on the chicken had a similar smell and odor to the Pork Gyoza described above. This was $18, for a meal from a food truck. They literally put chicken and rice with bunch of crazy sauces, and it just doesn't work. There is nothing more to it... though less of whatever they are trying to do would have been better (how chicken was cooked was good; sauces and everything else, absolutely not).

Maybe this place was good at some point or at another location, but this absolutely was not it. It was $30+ with tax and I unfortunately ended up throwing out the food and getting...

I've been wanting to try this place forever since hearing about it, but I don't live in Florida & last visit the truck was having mechanical issues. I was really excited for their unique take on Asian food. I was surprised to walk through the storefront to access a food truck. Then, really disappointed that they have no buzzers or any other kind of notification system. The truck had about 4 staff, but they were really disorganized. When I went to check to see if my food was ready, they kind grabbed the bagged up food and said "yeah, this is yours" I was given a wrong dish, wrong sauces & no receipt, so I have no idea if I got someone else's order. The paper containers had greasy handprints all over them, which really didn't fit the high-end vibe you expect for $20+ meals. With a name like "dirty rice" I was expecting a kind of flavorful fried rice, but it was really just mayonnaise sauce (no one needs that much mayo) & fried onions. The tuna was tasty, but the mayo & rice was gross. The flavors weren't balanced. Lobster rangoons were the best part of the meal, though the sauce was sickeningly sweet. It was thick, like thickened honey. I ordered the wagyu dumplings, which needed some fresh herbs inside to break up the rich meat, but only had onions as garnish on top. These were also served with the gross sugar sauce (apparently accidentally because the staff had no idea what sauces they even offered). The "correct" sauce was also a sweet teriyaki, which was also very wrong. Dumpling sauce is soy, vinegar & chili. It's not rocket science. I also ordered the BBQ beef short rib because they said they were out of tuna (yet served it to me anyways). This was sweet BBQ brisket with mayonnaise on rice. Is it "Asian" because you put sesame seeds on it? This was so off-balanced being only sweet & fatty, with no real acid to balance the dish. The portion was generous, but it went straight to the trash, because the other dishes gave me a week's worth of sugar intake. I dunno if it was the staff or just this menu being 90% sugar based, but I don't think I'd go back for the...