Danielle
Well, I have to say that I’m so disappointed that the Huntington Beach RA was the location of this happy hour as I’ve been to RA in the past and enjoyed it. I’ve been to this location years ago when it opened but I have frequented the Tustin location the most. It just disappointed, all the way around.
When I got there, the place was not as busy as I had expected based on my past experience in which it was packed. We were a table of 8. I’m not sure if our server had the whole restaurant or just our side but the service was poor to say the least. I waited a while to order a beer which took THE longest time to arrive. I ordered the large and for the first time, I had a large beer sitting in front of me with no glass offered. I had to wait until someone came by (not my server) to ask for one. I’m always the gal who drinks from the bottle; however, this bottle was too large or maybe I would have fit into the crowd better that way…hmmm. My roll that I ordered never arrived and after watching others eat and waiting until my server finally made her way back, I was really annoyed. I inquired about the roll and she said she’d check. At last, it arrived.
This is not my favorite place for sushi but I usually enjoy the rolls and appetizers. I ordered my standard, viva Las Vegas roll. I was stoked for it to arrive only to be disappointed by the fishy taste. I had to scrape the topping off and eat the roll itself which was bland without the flair of the spicy fish on top. I decided to scoop the topping with the chips from top to see if I could disguise the taste---fail—the chips were as stale as stale could be. *sigh* I ordered the pineapple & cream cheese wontons and shishito peppers since those are hard to mess up and they were just good. The up side to the food is the choice per dollar category. However, the price and choices weren’t worth it on this occasion when the food is stale and fishy.
The ambience was lackluster. It was the usual raw décor with “booty music” playing in the background to an uninterested crowd with the exception of a crowd in the corner that provided some form of entertainment for me. I was confused and at first thought a DJ booth was situated in the corner as I saw guys dancing toward the corner. Only then did I realize a group of girls were seated. Downtown HB intrigues me so…..
Food: ★☆☆☆☆ (it gets a 1 for menu options)
Service: ★☆☆☆☆ (a 1 since I didn’t have to retrieve it from the kitchen myself)
Price: ★☆☆☆☆
Ambience: ★☆☆☆☆
Overall: ★☆☆☆☆
S Factor: ☆☆☆☆☆
Candice
“School is now in session.” Or at least this is what it seemed since this HB establishment on a Thursday evening happy hour was devoid of any crowd or small group gatherings aside from our own. In short, this experience was overall disappointing – from service, to food, to the ambience, so let me cut to the chase….two thumbs down. It was unfortunate that this was my experience because this restaurant was on my list of anticipated places to visit given the many recommendations from people I knew and the decent reviews of the Tustin location. Maybe that was the problem… wrong location? Uh huh, okay, maybe….Regardless, the only two perks to this happy hour visit was having the opportunity to spend time with seven other good friends for a small celebration and the fact that this was just an early “make-up” happy hour for the one Danielle and I would be missing next week. Lucky for RA sushi that I had another happy hour event to look forward the following evening, otherwise this review might have been more callous.
Well, because the S-factor was non-existent for this adventure, I will offer my two-cents regarding the food and service. Let me just point out that I am a big fan of Japanese food albeit have not yet quite acquired the palate for raw fish (yes, I know I am Asian, thank you very much). So, to satiate my current palate, I tried a medley of cooked rolls including the Viva Las Vegas roll, Crunchy Calamari roll, Shrimp Tempura roll, as well as the Dengaku Tofu. Yikes! Would you like an example of stale? Oops, I’d say the food is certainly suspect and not worthy of the menu price, let alone the happy hour price! I love tempura – who doesn’t love deep fried batter?!?- and believe that tempura batter should be crispy and crunchy. Who would have thought it should be chewy? Huh. Well, chewy it was, and in each and every bite and roll I tried. Bland, chewy, and not-so-visually appealing…However, I will give kudos though to the bartender, who made my only decent “dish” of the evening – the Blushing Geisha. It was refreshing, tasty, and light on the alcohol. Enough words wasted on the food so let’s move on to the service. I am sympathetic to our waitress having to cater to a group of eight adults, but I am not forgiving to the fact that only 1/3 of our table was addressed at a time to take our menu orders. She would take a couple orders and then left our table only to be summoned back to our table within minutes to take the next 1/3 orders. Strange and quite inconvenient I might add. And, not to make a long description even longer, but, one of our friends at the table is quite the connoisseur in seafood and had a quick convo with the manager on the flavor of the fish that evening. She rarely ever complains about any foods she consumes but inedible seafood is not tolerated in her book. Since I did not try the raw fish myself, I can only rely on her expertise that the fish she consumed was reportedly undeniably, atypically, and exceptionally “fishy.” Moreover, as I eavesdropped on the discussion between her and the manager, I will admit I was humored by how appalled she was by some of the manager’s responses, in particular with regards to the quality of freshness of RA’s seafood that shall not, cannot, and should not be repeated here.
So…would I recommend you to visit this place if you are any decent friend of mine? Sorry RA in HB, you will have to get it from someone else….
Food: ☆☆☆☆ ☆
Service: ☆☆☆☆☆
Price: ★☆☆☆☆
Ambience:★ ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ★☆☆☆☆
S Factor: ☆☆☆☆☆
To view the happy hour menu online, please visit here
