I feel sort of bad leaving a negative review, especially since I only visited this place once while traveling through town. All restaurants can have an "off night", so you should really give a place a couple tries before getting nasty, but the purpose of Yelp is about people getting a batting average of a restaurant's overall quality, and this was a pricey disappointment I can't help share, for not only your possible benefit...but more importantly theirs if they ever read this!
In Kobe's defense, the servers and ambience are top shelf. It's a cool little downstairs joint and the place was packed on a Wednesday night. I got some food to go but hung out and had a couple beers while waiting for the food to get finished. The hostess and waitress were both friendly and attentive. They even agreed to make some stuff for me that was not really "on the menu" (even though the things I requested are pretty much standard issue in most sushi joints across America...and I've traveled a bit and eat a lot of Japanese cuisine whenever I can).
At the end of the day, I'll put up with shitty service over bad food, but got the complete opposite at Kobe. When I got back to our hotel with the food, my wife commented on how her salmon skin hand roll was REALLY sub par...and tasted like the fish had been left out in the elements too long.
The beef tataki I had was excellent however, so I figured the tuna tataki would be just as good, and maybe they just messed up on the salmon skin roll since it wasn't a "usual" menu item for them .
How wrong I was. The tuna tataki was beautifully prepared and presented, but the fish was just plain bad. It smelled like a dock and what should have been bright pink tuna meat had suspicious dark grey areas on it. I tried to eat it anyways but the fishy flavor was too much so I ended up throwing it in the trash. So long, almost $10 menu "starter" item, but anyone that's ever gotten food poisoning from fish knows it ain't worth risking at any price, and I hope I'm okay tomorrow.
And another item I'd ordered and paid for ended up not even being in the take home bag when I got home (to a hotel), but if the quality of the fish was equal to the other dishes, maybe I dodged a bullet there.
The miso soup was good, and the sunomono salad was too, but as these are both very safe bets that don't require "freshness' and are pretty standard from place to place, didn't really save the experience in my (or my wallet's) opinion.
Long story short: I think this place has real potential, great staff, good ambience, but they either need to find a new seafood distributor or figure out their stocking / food inventory better. The only reason places serve bad fish is if they overstocked, scheduled deliveries badly, and have to blow out the "less fresh" stuff before the luckier customers get the good stuff right after the latest delivery. It's sort of important to figure out if you're trying to maintain a sushi joint (Fish N' Chips place where everything's deep fried, who cares?).
I basically spent around $70 bucks for a couple beers and take away for two people and a third of the stuff wasn't even really edible even if it looked pretty.
Definitely go here to drink, but not to eat anything except for safe appetizers (or thoroughly cooked food) until they find someone that keeps a better eye on the quality of fish they serve.
Sorry, Kobe. Might give you another shot when I drive through Ashland again, but will be proceeding with caution. read more