The waiter was friendly and helpful and was going to work out just fine. Very helpful and made sure my lemonade came right out (they have coke products, so no Dew).
I wasn’t going to try the same thing I had the previous time (the Big Kahuna Burger), so I set about figuring out what I either wanted or what sounded appealing or weird. I was really hungry so I tried to figure out what combinations of things would fill me up. I eventually decided on the Basil Pesto Linguini, but I needed an appetizer of some sort. The menu has a section called Perfect Pairings – you can pick two smaller portion items in the list and they’ll combine them into an entrée (or appetizer for someone like me). I thought the Oriental Salad and the Lunch Roll Combo sounded like a decent appetizer.
I ordered my food and sat back to wait. Based on the length of time I was there the previous trip, I brought a book to read at the table this time – have to catch up on schoolwork sometime, right? I was really surprised that the food took 27 minutes to come out .I actually clocked it, since I wanted to make sure I wasn’t estimating how long it took. I STILL think this is a really long time to wait, especially at lunch and especially when they weren’t terribly busy.
The food however, was MUCH better than the last time I was there. I started with the appetizery portion – the sushi and oriental salad. I’m not a huge sushi guy (at least in the past), but I have found I can not only tolerate it, but I actually look forward to it and enjoy it now. I’m not an expert, so keep that in mind. The Lunch Roll Combo comes with 4 pieces of California Roll and 4 pieces of Spicy Tuna Roll. The tuna flavor really came through – I wasn’t sure if it would or not, but there really isn’t anything else with a strong enough flavor to compete with it. I loved the tiny bit of spice in this, but (and this is just for me), it still had some fishy flavor to it. Not enough to make it gross, but enough so that it was there. However, it was still enjoyable – I’m not complaining – and for that matter, probably how it was supposed to taste. I liked it. The California Roll is simple and easy on the palette, so that was the better of the two in my opinion. Very delicious and I’m glad I got that.The Oriental Salad was a pretty simple salad of napa cabbage, green onions, almonds, and ramen noodles with a sweet soy dressing. There were also a couple carrot slices and red pepper which jazzed it up a bit. It was a very light salad, but still pretty good. Not amazing, especially compared to the sushi, but still a good appetizer.
I’m torn a bit on the Basil Pesto Linguine. It is pieces of chicken and andouille sausage with spicy basil pesto chipotle cream sauce. The waiter had asked me if it was alright to leave it spicy, and I said yes. Like a lot of things in Minnesota (D.Rough being the exception) it wasn’t remotely spicy. It had great flavor though, so that’s alright. It wasn’t a ginormous portion, which was good, since it was lunch, and also I had just had what amounted to an appetizer already. So the flavor is the good part. The “middle” part of my like/dislike spectrum was that I really couldn’t tell which was chicken and which was sausage. They both tasted good, but for some reason (I’ll get to that with the dislike part) they both tasted the same and actually sort of chewed the same. The part I didn’t really care for was the amount of olive oil in this dish. The pasta and meat were seriously swimming in olive oil. It ended up making the meat taste the same and was pretty messy, no matter what I did. There were splashes of olive oil all around my dish and a now see a handful of spots of olive oil on my dress shirt (sigh). Here’s a photo of the pool of olive oil left in the bottom of this deep dish of pasta. Like I said, I was torn.
Despite being torn on whether or not I liked the pasta, the service and flavor of the appetizers and entrée were exponentially better than last time at Kona Grill. There are enough options on the Perfect Pairings menu or the sandwiches/wraps menu that you can get out of there for $15 for lunch. Maybe just a little work on the speed of things (there is NO WAY you can eat here and get back to work in under an hour), and this place will make its way back into my good graces hahaha. Seriously, it’s much better than the first time I went and I won’t hesitate to go back here… when my boss is on vacation.
Top 5 things about Kona Grill
1. California Roll
2. Spicy Tuna Roll
3. Still think the atmosphere of this place is top-notch
4. Pick two combo plates are a fantastic idea
5. Flavor of the Basil Pesto Linguine
Bottom 5 things
1. Length of time waiting for food
2. Pool of olive oil in the linguine seemed excessive
3. Another dress shirt for the trash – this is mostly my fault, I’m an expert sloppy eater
4. The oriental salad was really green-onion-heavy. Probably my own taste, but still, there were a LOT
5. There could have been more sweet soy dressing on the salad
www.konagrill.com
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