Kona Grill Carmel

“Not gonna lie, this place seemed super fancy initially and it is. The food though.. 😚 👌🏽 Ordered the steakhouse burger and it was cooked to perfection. Loved my loaded fries and the amount of mozzarella they put in it. Star of the show for me was the wagyu fried rice. My 5-year old’s bento box left her speechless because she was too busy eating. Last but not least, Ella, our awesomely sweet server was super attentive and polite. She definitely highlighted and made our awesome first of many meals here, memorable.”

“My daughter and I stopped in after Christmas shopping and enjoyed a wonderful sushi meal, topped off with a delicious butter cake for dessert. Our server, James, was fantastic—informative, pleasant, and so accommodating. We live in Martinsville, but we’d gladly make the drive again. Highly recommend Kona Grill in Carmel!”

“I deleted my previous 1-star review from last year to post a new review for this year. Kona Grill has some positives worth mentioning. They are open on holidays, which is much appreciated, and their menu is quite extensive, offering several options for different tastes. However, the service experience left much to be desired. The servers clearly need more training in customer service. About 80% of the time, they walked by the table without asking if everything was okay, and the 20% of times they did ask, they turned away before you could even finish responding, which made it necessary to repeat requests and made the service exhausting for both sides. There were no recommendations from the server—neither for drinks, food, nor desserts. In fact, at the end of the meal, the server came directly asking for the check, when I still wanted to order dessert. We were a table of three, and all of us had soft drinks. When it was time to refill, the server left all the empty cups on the table as if collecting them. By the end of the meal, we had more than 10 empty cups on the table, including water cups, which felt careless and uncomfortable. Additionally, the host staff could improve their attitude. They should smile more and avoid acting as if they hate their job or are forced to work, especially on a day like Christmas. I understand working on a holiday can be challenging and that not everyone is in the best mood, but this should be communicated to management, not reflected in the customer experience. There were 4 or 5 other options for a Christmas breakfast, yet we chose Kona Grill expecting a better experience.”

“It was a pretty bad experience overall. Starting from after we sat down, the chair was dirty, and nobody came to help us until 20 minutes later. There were many items available on the menu online, but wasn't available. They said because it's January, so some items are not available. After we ordered, our appetizer didn't arrive until 20 minutes later. We ordered our entrees, and our food didn't arrive until another 30 minutes. The sushi I ordered was $20 with only 8 pieces on there and it was super salty. The server didn't tell us happy hour starts soon after we order. The same sushi I ordered was only $6 on the happy hour menu. I was still hungry after finishing the sushi. The cheesecake we ordered was $15. It was so tiny, and it had a small piece of mysterious vegetable and sesame seed in there. It tells me that possible cross contamination and unclean dinnerware was going on in the kitchen. The restroom was filthy with water everywhere on the sink counter. The restaurant wasn't even that busy when we were there. There were so many empty seats. We were very disappointed. I would not recommend this place to others.”

“Some of the food was really good. We loved the BBQ chicken flatbread and avocado egg rolls. However the burgers were subpar and definitely not worth the price. The Happy Hour menu is a steal and available all day Monday. Service was awful, with half the table’s meals coming out 7 minutes after the rest of the table. Waters were consistently empty and even the most basic of substitutions (sweet potato fries instead of regular) we were denied. We were sitting with empty plates and empty water glasses for about 20 minutes before our server stopped again. We then waited over 25 minutes to get out to go desserts brought to our table. It was a Monday night and the server maybe had 4 tables they were waiting on.”