wonderful quality, horrible service.. so, my wife and i decided to give sushi republic a try. we were greeted by a warm hostess and offered a seat relatively quickly. the decor was dark, clean, and modern. there was a random fan on the floor in the sushi bar. it was after this point that things basically took an odd turn.
we had a random server bring water and menus to the table, tell us that she wasn't our waiter, and then disappear. okay, strange, but we'll keep going. finally, our waiter (we think) shows up to take a drink order. i order a porter, my wife orders a glass of riesling. simple enough. drinks come out in a matter of minutes. by the same guy that took the order. we settle on a few apps, a few pieces of nigiri, and a few rolls. many of the rolls looked very creative, and the same with the apps.
we ordered a tokyo tower (a mix of tuna, salmon, avocado, mango, and a ponzu sauce) and a simple seaweed salad. the seaweed salad was delicious, and despite being a bit difficult to eat, so was the tower.
on to the rest. it's a saturday evening, so the restaurant is somewhat busy. the sushi chefs are flying through tickets as they show up and everything coming out from the bar looked like art on a plate. we see a rather large order waiting to be brought out and recognize it to be our order. this is where everything effectively went to hell for us.
our order was sitting near the bar, being approached by random customers who felt it necessary to point at all of the things about to be in my mouth and ask questions. one patron, for some reason, believed them to be free appetizers. we sat and watched the absolute and utter confusion as the food was not being expedited to the folks that ordered it. this wasn't just an issue with our order, but we saw it happen to many others. servers would stare at the order and walk off, reach over it, etc, but it literally took us asking "is that our order that has been sitting there for 15 minutes" before it was brought to our table.
there seemed to be a storm of utter confusion and i can only imagine that folks don't want room temperature urchin, much like i didn't.
so, the food. the yellowtail and super white tuna were great. i'm not an outright urchin fan, but this was tasty. we had the escape roll, spider roll, sex in the city roll, and the tate street roll. the escape and spider rolls were favorites. the sex in the city roll would've been incredible, but the amount of raw red onion in the mango salsa was overpowering. i enjoyed the tate street roll. we were presented our check and left with a really confused taste in our mouth. can you recommend a restaurant based on food alone? should you take a step back if you see a "hiring waiters" sign on the door?
i'll give this place a second chance simply because it seemed to be a better value than others in greensboro, but how about figuring out how to get the food from the talented chefs out to the tables of folks that are waiting on it. the issue here is only with the apparent confusion of what to do with food once it is ready. here's a tip: carry it to the customer that ordered it.