Bad Mama — Restaurant in Sydney

We had such a dissappointing night when we went there last week. Its such a shame because we love Mamasan in Bondi so much. It was a Wednesday night when we went there and was really impressed with the ethereal, whimsical, forest theme of the place as soon as we walked in. We ordered drinks and duck pancake and chilli chicken to start with. Drinks were great and duck pancakes arrived timely amd was delicious. It all then went downhill from there. After waiting for nearly 40mins, chilli chicken hasnt arrived yet so we asked the staff about it and she replied "oh, it hasnt arrived it?" Not even an apology. After waiting for another 15mins, by this time no one even approached us or offer us another drink, chilli chicken came and it was good. We asked if we can move to the other table with chairs that has back support coz our backs were already hurting from sitting in the wooden chair after waiting for so long, they obliged but didnt even help us in moving our plates and drinks. Staff just sneak up behind you and interrupt us in our conversation without excusing themselves. We asked for dessert menu and i ordered their gooey salted caramel cake and crene brulee. Waited another half an hour for it and when it arrived, i tasted the chocolate cake and it was so salty. I love salt but it was way too salty for a dessert. Staff said its because of the salted caramel, which was annoying because she thinks i havent tried salted caramel before. I asked the staff to return it but i also asked her to let the chef try it. She came back apologising and asked if i want creme brulee instead. I said sure..she added that chef tried to taste the chocolate cake and thinks that it was also salty! Huwaat? Anway after about 10mins she came back and said they ran out of creme brulee and asked if i want another of the chocolate cake!! We said dont worry and asked for the bill. Bill came and they charged us for the chocolate cake. We told them we are not paying fr the cake bcoz we returned it. After all this, the staff said to us, "just press that button if you want to give tip"..which of course we didnt. Shame. This place is so beautiful. Change ur staff,...

Bad Mama's is an odd Japanese-fusion venue with nice music. Food is okay if you're looking for a Western-style version of Asian food, & drinks were decent especially before 6pm with some happy hour specials.

However, a good customer experience was essentially non-existent. When booking, we were not notified of the 1hr 45min seating time and only became aware of it when we were about to order. We were not provided plates or cutlery with our entrees - when we requested it, we were instructed to use some of the soup spoons in the share dishes, rather than providing us each new ones. The reason? They didn't have enough (note that this was at 5:30pm)!

Odd, but we went along with it. We ordered our mains after and had half of the dishes come out first. By the time the rest of our mains had come out, there was only 5 minutes to go until the 1hr 45min was up. However, one of the other staff members could tell we wouldn't finish in time due to the delay in the food arrival, and so let us know we could stay for an extra 15 minutes on top of the allocated seating time. This person was very nice about it, though, it did seem like they were confused about a few things throughout the night.

Just 5 minutes over the seating time, while we were still eating, the other staff member (who didn't want to give us enough spoons per person) essentially forced our table out, but not before asking if we "ordered our dishes late". Unsure of how this is a necessary question to ask your patrons when she can firstly check when our order went through, but also, secondly it shouldn't be up to customers to shove their food down quickly due to a delay in the kitchen. Either way, they just took our food without us asking to and put it in a takeaway box to get us to leave despite us letting that staff member know we had been reallocated extra time.

Confusing, uncaring behaviour altogether without the experience of good food on top. 10/10 would...

Came here for a Sat night bite with my husband and a good friend and we ordered: Tuna Tataki One Bite Beef Duck Pancakes Moreton Bay Bugs Wild Mushrooms Mix 3 x Onigiris 2 x Espresso Martinis 1 x Berry Sparkle Mocktail Custard Buns The Gooey Purple Sticky Rice Porridge

All dishes were cooked perfectly with the Moreton Bay bugs being our fave followed by the Mushroom Mix & Beef being my next faves. The duck pancakes didn’t surpass traditional Peking Duck pancakes as the skin wasn’t crispy. A little ordinary and I could easily skip this next time. The Custard Buns were very underwhelming so don’t order this. The Gooey was nice and perfect for 1.

Service was fantastic that night. Wait staff were attentive and fulfilled all requests quickly and the food came flying out very quickly too. The drinks took longer than the food which was strange.

Love all the trinkets and decorations around the place. I especially loved the little Studio Ghibli references on the wall (Porco Rosso) and in the menu (Spirited Away). It made the place very quirky and gave you lots to look at!

Having a Liven deal made this worthwhile for us and we would...