Kin Pan-Asian Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

Editing my review to accurately address Kin’s response. Well the first red flag was according to Kin’s Instagram and AI phone system, they open at 4:30pm. So we waited on the park bench outside until 4:30 to arrive at 4:35 to a closed door and waited outside, only to be completely ignored by staff until 4:50pm, when we were finally let in and told they actually don’t open until 5 and I questioned the phone system and Instagram and was told these must be have been updated. If the security cameras were check they would know this is accurate. We even heard the manager speak to the staff member about how they were supposed to open at 4:30. A little clarity—or even a simple acknowledgment—would’ve gone a long way.

Once seated, the food was unfortunately no better. The miso soup was cold and mostly made up of tofu and seaweed, with barely any broth. The waitress also confirmed they had forgotten to turn the burner on to heat the soup and it was a mistake. She took these and returned them hot. The sashimi tasted fishy and didn’t seem fresh, yes we finished this as it’s not uncommon for fish to taste different and also for what we thought was a prime restaurant and only up to our second meal felt safe to continue eating and considering we would have to pay for it. The soy sauce bottles were empty. The bao buns arrived cold and stiff—definitely not the warm, fluffy texture you'd expect. Once again yes we ate these as they weren’t bad enough to presume we would get sick but just not fresh.

Still hoping things might improve, we moved on to the beef robata skewers—only to find them raw, cold, and bloody in the middle. We were never asked for a preference of cooking but I still don’t believe if steak is cold in the middle this is how it was supposed to be served.

At that point, we had to leave. I politely let the waitress know we wouldn’t be continuing with the remaining three dishes we had ordered. To her credit, she was lovely and completely understanding—honestly, the only redeeming part of our visit was her customer service.

I am shocked this restaurant has presumed we wanted a free meal. We were visiting the area and often treat ourselves to $300+ dinners and have never received a “free” meal nor had the reason to complain. Japanese and Asian fusion is our absolute favourite and I take offence to there response presuming we are these type of people. Anyway that just shows the type of people they are for responding that way on a public review.

We’ve paid similar (or even less) prices elsewhere for way better food. I can’t help but feel the five-star reviews might be swayed by the “free butterscotch schnapps for a 5-star review” sign on each table. As tempting as that might be for some, I’ll pass—and give my honest opinion instead. Perhaps if they didn’t have AI on their phone they could answer my call or call me to talk about this experience before having to publicly review.

I would also like to add, my husband and I have had extremely upset...

Came here last week of May 21 for Omakase Menu to celebrate a friends birthday.

First the restaurant has a really nice atmosphere, abit tight which I believe is a good representation of restaurants in Japan because of the lack of space. But I'm not sure about the seatings on the side where you have to take off your shoe and cross leg sit. 4 of us having need to stretch our legs every 15 mminutes of sitting and is very uncomfortable.

Services, all the staff that serves us are nice. But need to work on their memory. Asked for ala carte menu or so they called it Bar menu. Asked for 4 times in total. Then also we did ask the gentleman to see if he can do something about candle lighting to celebrate friends birthday, said he will look into it but never got back to us. However i dont blame them as it was a last minute request.

Now the food, 60%-70% of the food was delicious. The beginning dish (takana and cauliflower) was so small to share among 4 people. The tempura eggplant was nice but the eggplant is too thin, the taste and texture of the eggplant is almost non existence. The oysters had to be ordered separately and it was nice and fresh however is super salty... $5 ea? not worth it.

Next is the assorted skewers, "only 2 types and 1 for each person". Pork asparagus was nice. but the chicken breast skewers were dry.

Next is the rice with some sashimis. Was nice can't fault.

Then we have chicken with wasabi sauce and also serve with "a" plate of yakisoba. Chicken again was nice. Yakisoba flavour is ok. Problem is the yakisoba was cold...Japanese stirfried noodle serve cold. cant believe this happenned. And again "a" plate share among 4 people...

Then the dessert, nice, but i rather not put the popcorn like texture ingredient in there. serves no purpose.

Overall it was quite a dissapointment, paid $450+ shared across 4 people. This Omakase menu was the biggest fail. Yakitori is japanese word for chicken skewers, but these kinds of restaurants serve all kinds of skewers and should be focused on this. But this whole omakase only 2 skewers for each person... and $85 per person? this is a joke. If I were you, either go somewhere else or DONT "leave it...

Sydney Prices with lacklustre food! ☹️

We dined at Kin yesterday and were so disappointed with the service and food quality. We were sat at our table at 4.35pm and given menus. We noticed in large letters on the back of the menu HAPPY HOUR 12PM-5PM. We approached the Waitress at 4.45pm and asked if we could order some drinks at the happy hour rate. We were met with ‘no sorry happy hour is not available’, when asked why she said ‘no sorry it’s not available on Tuesdays’. I then questioned this as the menu said otherwise. She then advised us it’s only available on Fridays and Saturdays and we should look to Instagram for the happy hour details and the menus are wrong. The waitress who was the Manager then agreed to give us the drinks at happy hour prices. To our surprise while on a visit to the toilet the 12pm-5pm daily Happy hour was advertised on the back of the toilet doors and home page of their website, same details as the Menus!

On the lacklustre food, the Onyx Beef skewers were tough and chewy - seemed like sirloin and not marble beef and not worth $19 for two skewers. The Prawn & Scallop skewers, the prawns were frozen, tiny and the scallop was non-existent. The Asian greens had no taste, not even garlic so we drowned them in soy sauce. The food is expensive for what it is. To top it off there were cockroaches 🪳 crawling on the wall of our table and the back of our booth. The Manager agreed to discount the bill $19 for the black onyx skewers which was some consolation. We had visitors from Sydney and they were blown away by the quality and the prices.

In the current market, small businesses are vying for customer loyalty to stay afloat. It seemed like the Manager didn’t really care if we were there or not which was disappointing.

The most hilarious part of the night was as we were paying the bill we found a flyer on the table that said ‘Receive a free Butterscotch schnapps shot’ if you give us a 5 star...