Cafe Kentaro — Restaurant in Sydney

Following the success of Cafe Oratnek in Redfern, Chef Kenny Takayama has opened a second cafe in Surry Hills. This large cafe in a quiet street with leafy surrounds is not far from Cleveland St, Crown St and the light rail stops, hence it is in an excellent location. The cafe is light and bright with rustic industrial styling with exposed brick walls, indoor and outdoor seating. Chef Kenny has curated a menu that is authentic fusion. It has some signature elements to those found at Oratnek, but a number of other dishes with strong Japanese influence. The meals here are certainly unique and unlike any you’ll find in other Sydney cafes. Their all day breakfast is not your run of the mill bacon and eggs, rather a good list of interesting menu options like a crab omelette, sliced pork belly and kim chi on toast, umami mushroom toast and even matcha French toast. We opted for the beautiful House-baked Granola with flavourful toasted oats, nuts, seeds, strawberries, passion fruit, banana, blueberries, yoghurt & milk. Stunning in presentation and super delicious. The chefs are certainly skilled, for they also offer all day lunch. Their signature dish is the katsu sandwich with pork loin, cabbage, japanese bbq sauce, american sweet mustard. They’ve also got a KaraAge sanga and the new omurice. We ordered an omurice, a nice sweet tomato flavoured rice topped with peas, bacon, tomato and cheese, topped with a creamy egg omelette and a dark miso gravy. This was awesome and probably our favourite dish. The shrimp roll, also a new menu item, saw the creamy shrimp mixture with a dill wasabi mayonnaise, sitting within a soft bread roll and lettuce. Lovely and refreshing for autumn. This cafe has a great amount of desserts, in particular, matcha! The famous matcha lamington barely makes the cabinet as it’s snapped up by hungry customers who have heard of this delight. The Matcha Mille Feuille dessert, with a buttery crisp pastry, filled with beautiful layers of sliced strawberries uses 100% grade quality matcha in the piped custard. Not only incredibly beautiful, but super tasty too! The food is also reasonably priced, which is impressive given the high quality and intricacy of the meals. Kentaro, like Oratnek use coffee supplier and roaster Kingswood Coffee (of Kingswood Coffee, World Square). We enjoyed a smooth latte as well as espresso jelly and ice cream. The cafe does also serve beer and wine which is great for a leisurely lunch. Do yourselves a favour and make a visit here for their Japanese inspired meals...

We love Japanese food so we were thrilled to discover a Japanese fusion cafe. I am also a non coffee drinker so having the option of matcha and hojicha latte was a refreshing change. We ordered matcha and hojicha latte, pork Katsu sandwich, Yaki soba hotdog bun and a matcha cream puff. Overall verdict is good with good service and nice food. Price wise - slightly expensive. But we thought that there are improvements that can be done to up the ante.

Pork Katsu sandwich - ordered 2 of these. Mine was still tender and a little juicy but apparently my friend's Katsu was overcooked and dry. I did notice the Katsu they use here is very lean, which is good for health conscious people but having all lean pork makes it a difficult dish to do, as it can become easily overcooked and dry. I did think it was already amazing my Katsu wasn't dry and tough but I would suggest using a cut which has some fats in it so that the pork Katsu can be juicier and is unlikely to become dry easily. The way Tonkatsu dish in Japanese restaurants is presented usually leaves the cabbage at the side so that the cabbage can be eaten separately to balance out the greasiness of the pork Katsu. In Cafe kentaro, adding the cabbage inside the sandwich doesn't help to balance the dish as the sauce makes the cabbage soggy, so would suggest that they either leave the cabbage at the side or they would have to increase the ratio of cabbage to sauce in the sandwich. Some Japanese pickles here might also help to balance the dish more.

Yakisoba hotdog sandwich - the sausage and bun is nice by itself, yakisoba and bonito is nice by itself. But somehow the dish doesn't go together based on our palate. The yakisoba and bonito makes the hotdog bun very sweet. Perhaps they need to make the yakisoba less sweet, then add something salty or pickled to balance it out.

Matcha cream puff - this is so worth spending your calories on. The matcha cream is creamy and yet light and fluffy. The Puff was the crunchy type which some people may like but we prefer the soft fluffy kind. Still a very good dessert but a bit expensive in our opinion at $7 for a small cream puff.

Matcha and hojicha latte - nice but could have added more matcha or hojicha as the taste wasn't obvious.

Still it's a lunch that we enjoyed, keep up the...

I recently had a disappointing experience at a restaurant in Cafe Kentaro, and I feel the need to share it for the sake of improvement. After finding the place on Xiaohongshu, we were excited to try it. However, the service was far from what we expected.

We ordered several dishes, including an omurice, which was served with an unusual salmon-colored sauce. When I asked the server about the sauce and whether the egg was fully cooked, he seemed dismissive, and my husband requested to reheat it politely. The female server ( named Kris or Krist) who took over was unhelpful and refused, stating they don’t have microwave and had never reheated food. When we finish the meal, we paid at the counter, the manager contradicted this, admitting reheating was possible and offering a fully cooked version of the omurice, just need to wait another 10-15mins. However after my husband shown a shocked face, he changed his word because he wanted to “protect” his staff.

As a 8-months pregnant woman( it’s easy to tell I’m pregnant) I was frustrated by the lack of consideration for dietary restrictions, and the staff’s unwillingness to offer a simple solution or even an apology was disappointing. We were not asking for a refund, just basic understanding and professionalism.

I hope the restaurant improves its staff training and customer service, especially for special dietary needs, and that future customers don’t experience the same issues.

I normally post about all the great food and restaurants on social media to recommend them to my friends, but this time, I didn’t. I hope all my friends not only enjoy the food but also experience...