KOMEYUI Japanese Restaurant - Melbourne — Restaurant in Melbourne

Had the signature dinner menu which appears to change every two months I assume so I suppose experiences do vary between customers every once in a while. Note that the omakase menu is only available at the benches in front of the kitchen.

Salt cured scallop First course of the night. Fresh, sweet scallop with a surprisingly smokey but delicious green bean soup. Not much to say, great entree.

Oyster boat Huge oyster as depicted by the picture. Everything was really fresh. The prawn was sweet, the kind of sweet you get when it's really fresh. The salty, umami explosions from the fish roes were great and contrasted the light squeeze of lemon on the oyster itself. The uni then rounded everything out with a bit of creaminess.

Prawn dumpling Dumpling skin was bit tough and chewy. I've had my fair share of Chinese dumplings which usually have a very delicate and thin dumpling skin. Compared to that this was just ever so slightly thick and chewy.  Just the slightest bit that didn't give it a great mouth feel. But filling was great and the soup was delicately prawny which reinforced the whole dish.

Blue cheese Chawanmushi Deliciously silky, I'm a fan of blue cheese and I loved it and I didn't think it was too strong at all. Upon lifting up the lid I was greeted with the warm scent of truffles which was a nice touch and really gave it a nice scent throughout. Blue cheese also had slight bitter notes which was a nice contrast to the truffles and the sweetness of the custard. First dish of the menu that made me go wow. I thought this was really delicious and decadent.

Premium sashimi Sashimi is sashimi at a restaurant like this. Expected nothing less. Although at this point of the menu I tried the soy sauce for the first time and I'm not sure if they've mixed it with something or it is a high quality soy sauce but it didn't taste the same as normal soy sauce. Normal soy sauce is just salty but this one tastes sweet and is just pretty much umami black salt water. Maybe just mind tricks but it complimented the sashimi well and accentuated the sweetness of the uni even more. Didn't feel like this dish was very "premium". Premium because of the uni? Otherwise it was just two pieces of salmon, two pieces of tuna and some uni.

Dried blue swimmer crab. Probably my least favourite dish. It was all a bit dry. I think the shaved foie gras was the wrong move. Made the dish a bit dry which needed some creaminess or something of the sort. Because it was shaved all over the plate it pretty much melted when I scooped it up. Couldn't quite appreciate the move using dried crab either. Would've been better serving raw crab in the head along with the eggs if the crab had any, then piping the foie gras inside with the rice crackers on the side. Now that would've been delicious.

Wagyu dish The egg yolk is cured which sets it a little bit not quite all the way which gives it a creaminess that allowed it to coat the slices of beef. The biggest irony of this dish was that they provided you with a knife when you could literally separate the beef with your tongue. I'm always wary when someone says 'melt in your mouth' but this was the true embodiment of that saying. You can tell the beef was really well marbled and in addition to it being sliced so thinly it literally was melting in my mouth.

Granita Nothing much to say. Standard pallette cleanser. Fresh, cool and very sour. The blue colour was very pleasing I have to say. Didn't expect it to be this sour.

Nigiri Delicious and fresh. Tuna belly was so soft and full of flavour. Once again the soy sauce was the unsung hero.

Butter cherry semifreddo Was actually really good. The bitter cherry was slightly tart and not as bitter as I imagined it to be and the Anglais provided the sweetness that rounded out the dish very well. No flavour was too overpowering or outstanding but altogether worked very well in harmony.

Notable mentions: the cod was amazing and the brown sugar dessert was pretty good.

Running out of letters....

What a disappointment.

My partner (who is Japanese) and I booked an omakase dinner at the sushi counter for 2 December 2020. We made the booking months in advance and were very much looking forward to trying Komeyui, having read excellent reviews and seen obviously curated but impressive media postings about the new venue. We had high expectations, having been on several occasions (thoroughly enjoying them each time) to Minamishima and Kisume, and wanted to try this venue which has increasingly been mentioned in the same breath as the other two excellent restaurants.

Upon arrival (on time at 8pm) we were greeted by a hostess who was friendly but somewhat familiar - I felt like I was being greeted by a shiny retail assistant. This was ok, but we were made to wait awkwardly for around four minutes while a number of people paid their account in front of us, before we were taken to be seated. No other staff attended to us at this point to seat us.

When we were seated, it was at the (inverted commas intended) “sushi counter” - if you could call our position at the counter a genuine counter experience. In front of us was an enormous sink where wait staff were dumping glasses which had been used at tables. Just next to that was a cast of perhaps 15 to 20 empty beer and wine bottles and other dirty plates and glassware. Zero positive ambiance. The closest sushi chef, who is an essential and expected component of any omakase experience at a sushi counter, was around 6 metres away, and we would have had zero interaction with him during our dinner service except for when he delivered the sushi.

For a cost of dinner which would run north of $500 for two people with matched drinks, we felt like we were basically seated at a wash-up area. I expressed my concerns (that, among other disappointments, we were expecting a substantially better and more authentic experience as advertised by them) to a member of the wait staff, who informed me she was a manager. No apology was forthcoming, and instead we were told we would be re-seated at some point during our meal. Unacceptable.

Having received the our first nigiri each on a plate in front of us (while we were still seated next to the dirty dishes a mile away from the sushi chefs), which was placed before us approximately five seconds after we had indicated we would both be having omakase (suggestive that it wasn’t made to order but instead being churned out by kitchen staff) - we both agreed not to eat them, then stood up and informed the staff we would be leaving. This is the first time I or my partner have ever left a restaurant under such circumstances. It was uncomfortable.

The sushi counter is not well designed - it is simply too long - chefs are unable to personally attend to customers along its length. If seated on the right hand side of the counter, you will not be able to enjoy a genuine omakase experience.

A very, very disappointing night to say the least. Opt for Minamishima instead if you want an authentic, polished Japanese dining experience, and try Kisume if Minamishima is booked out. If both are booked out, I wouldn’t recommend settling on the option of Komeyui.

We really wanted to love it, but sorry - we...

We had a private dining room on the evening for my father's 73rd birthday.

The food, I cannot fault in any way at all. Presentation was spot on, flavour amazing, seasoned spot on, and each dish was given the attention to detail it fully deserved. In all, it earns every star it gets. The dry aged duck is a standout dish, even more than the A5 Wagyu. Their sashimi selection is brilliant, miso soup probably the best I've ever had. They have a great selection of dishes to choose from, but sadly it didn't translate well in the menu.

I found the menu extremely confusing to get my head around, on both occasions that we've eaten here. Usually I will pick one of the banquet set menus, and plan my own from there. That wasn't possible, as the way the dishes are laid out in the menu are confusing in nature and lack detail on how big or small the servings are, as well as how many portions it is.

However, the service here was the main issue. Drinks took far too long to serve and often it felt disjointed from the eating experience. Unfortunately, we also appear to have been served by an inexperienced waitress, which delayed things further with her often not noticing when we tried to call her over to order more drinks. It felt as though in the private dining area, we were rather forgotten about.

For the record, we did dine here about 4 months earlier in the main dining room and this was a non issue. So it might be just isolated to a few things like inexperienced wait staff, and the fact we were on our lonesome in that private room.

I do understand the young lady did her very best, but for the prices we paid here - I believe the service should be part of the experience, to which it detracted from it.

Whilst we were ordering, the waitress left on several occasions to check with the kitchen about portion sizes, as well as other things that might have been in the dish which we weren't aware of, or how the dish was made up. In all, the menu planning is nothing short of dreadful, confusing and frustrating. Though, once you get your head around it, things are ok. These are very simple things which are fixed by adequate staff training and transcribing the menu in such a way that everyone can make sense of it.

For an establishment of this calibre, I expected that these things would be far easier to deal with, without wait staff wandering off mid order to check with the kitchen over items which are written in the menu, which we've not asked to be changed in any way.

The atmosphere is really nice. Bathrooms are super clean and all staff are very polite, nonetheless. The decor is beautiful and has a warm ambience from the moment you enter. Japanese hospitality at a very high level is openly on display here, and Komeyui exceeds very well there. The only reason I gave a point off is because we felt somewhat neglected in the private dining room.

All up, a solid 3 stars out of 5 and would be happy to visit again one day if the above matters are rectified in future.

If this is your first time thinking of going to Komeyui, please definitely do so. It is an overall great experience and the food is nothing short...