Beautiful inside, absolutely atrocious service.
I've been trying different restaurants for Houston Restaurant Week, which is always exciting because you get to finally try places that have been sitting on your list forever and cross them off. Unfortunately, Haii Keii was a major miss for us.
First, the good. The inside is VERY vibey. It reminded us of Rush Hour with all the neon lights, or like a trendy happy hour spot somewhere in Japan. It's dark, trippy, colorful and honestly really pretty. Definitely a place where you'll want to take pictures. I could see this being a fun date night or a place to meet up with friends. We had reservations and were seated right away, so no complaints there.
Parking is in a garage, but they validate for two hours, which is pretty easy. You just have to check in within 20 minutes and get the validation code when you check in for your reservation.
And then the dinner started.
There were four of us, and two of our friends had a baby, so getting a night out is already a whole production. They had a babysitter and had planned for us to have dinner and be home within about 3.5 to 4 hours. We figured that would be MORE than enough time for dinner.
It wasn't.
There were three servers working the upstairs area from what we could tell, and the other two seemed to be moving pretty quickly. People weren't sitting around waiting for menus, drinks, checks, etc. Our server, however, would just disappear. Like, completely disappear for 20-25 minutes at a time.
It took forever to get menus, and we didn't even have enough menus for everyone because apparently they "didn't realize they were going to be this busy" and had run out. You're participating in Houston Restaurant Week, in a busy part of town. I'm not really sure how that's a surprise, but okay.
Then it took forever to get drinks.
We were doing the Houston Restaurant Week menu, which comes with an appetizer, entree and dessert. Somehow our ENTREES came out before our appetizers. One person's appetizer was completely forgotten.
The food itself was mostly okay. Some of the sushi was actually really good, and there were a couple things that I would potentially come back and try again. But nothing was really memorable enough to make me overlook the service.
And the service just kept getting worse.
When we were finally ready to leave, we got the check, put our cards down and then... waited. And waited. And waited. We ended up waiting about 37 minutes for someone to come get our cards.
At that point, our two-hour parking validation had expired, so we had to pay for parking. Again, paying for parking isn't the issue. I fully expect that I'll be spending money on things like tips, parking, and what have you, when I go out to dinner. The issue is that everyone else around us seemed to be able to have their meal and leave within two hours, while we were stuck there because our server couldn't seem to get back to our table.
Meanwhile, we were getting calls from the babysitter because we were running late. It was incredibly frustrating.
Eventually we just went downstairs to the bartender to check out because we couldn't wait anymore. And instead of even acknowledging how ridiculous it was that we had to come find someone to pay, the response was basically, "Yeah, we've been busy."
Cool. Except everyone else seemed to be managing just fine.
Haii Keii also automatically adds a 19% gratuity, which honestly made the whole experience even more frustrating. I can't help but feel like there was very little incentive to actually provide good service because the tip was guaranteed regardless. And unfortunately, that's exactly how the service felt.
We usually give restaurants two or three tries before we completely write them off because one bad experience can happen anywhere. But the service was so bad here that we have zero desire to come back.
Beautiful restaurant. Great atmosphere. Some good sushi. But the customer service completely ruined the experience for us.
Unfortunately, we won't be back. read more