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Nana's Smile

She's being goofy at me.

On Thursday night we ate at Kiku in Alpharetta and were greeted with yet another rule change. They have various discounts in place on Tuesday and Thursday for their sushi-go-round, and we'd become regulars, but the rules surrounding discounts keep changing for the worse and have led us to decide that we'll not be returning. Customer service at the restaurant has been falling steadily since I first visited last year. This post is very detailed, but if you've visited this restaurant or were considering it, I hope you'll read the whole thing.

During the holidays Kiku offered a "buy a $100 gift certificate, get a $20 gift certificate of your own" deal, and since they're such regulars, Dan bought one for the $20 savings (to use themselves). However, when he tried to redeem it the restaurant stated that the $20 certificate could not be used on half-price days because that would combine two discounts. Never mind that the $20 should have worked like cash, since it's a "gift certificate", not a coupon. He was unable to convince them to accept the $20 certificate but instead insisted on a refund, which they did accept.

When I first visited with the M's, Tuesday and Thursday nights were half-price. This meant that all food from the sushi-go-round was half-price on those evenings. A few weeks back, Nana and Dan arrived to be notified that they would have a "1 hour time limit", so that they "couldn't just stay and talk after they finished". That meant that they would have exactly 1 hour starting when they sat down, and afterward they would be asked to leave. Nana found this to be very rude. Then, when they next visited, the time limit rule had been modified such that exceeding the time limit would result in all food being charged full price, discarding the half-price discount. That'll sure get you to leave on time!

A creature of habit and good taste, Nana often orders a crab dish as a side. Kiku would cook it in the back room and put it on the conveyor for her to pick up, and it would be half-price just like everything else. When I joined them on Thursday, we rushed through our meal to meet the time limit and asked for the check. At that point we discovered that her crab dish was full price because it had been brought to the table rather than placed on the conveyor, which represented the final rule change: only items on the conveyor were discounted, not items brought to your table.

I'm surprised the M's made it this far, but that was the last straw. We'll not be returning to Kiku.

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