Cafe Oratnek — Restaurant in Sydney

(3.5 stars) Café Oratnek is a sweet, Japanese-inspired café that is located on the Cleveland Street end of Pitt Street, Redfern, just a few meters away from the leafy green surrounds of Prince Alfred Park. Set in a wide two-storey terrace, it has a raised front patio that is shady in the middle of the day. With palm trees and bird calls, the outside tables are pretty hard to resist, even in the middle of winter, though I do make a concession to the weather and order a hot drink.

My Hot Yuzu Lemonade ($5.50) arrives in a glass teapot set over a tealight candle warmer. The more floral Japanese citrus is gently sweetened, and it stays piping hot well into my third cup.

With Japanese-inspired dishes, the Pork Loin Katsu ($15) is hard to resist, even with a fifteen-minute lead time mentioned on the menu. The resulting three-piece sandwich sees slices of crust-free, fluffy white bread barely encase a hefty 200-gram, thick cut crumbed pork fillet. It’s lifted with American mustard, tonkatsu sauce and finely shredded lettuce, but it’s still likely to stonker you with the sheer amount of juicy pig.

With almost everything in their glass front counter looking luminously green, it’s clearly a matcha kind of place. Leaving the Aussie-Japanese hybrid, the matcha lamington, for another day, I hit up the White Chocolate and Matcha Brownie ($7) instead. While impressing on size, I was a bit surprised to find myself eating an almost fossilised, hard greenish slab. While the matcha was there in spades, it missed the mark on being a gooey, moist...

This review is about one of the staff at the cafe. We are on extended holiday in Sydney and are staying at a holiday home that is about 30 second walk from your 2nd location, Cafe Kentaro. We thought we’d give this location a try since the menu is a bit different and is only about 15 minute walk from where we are. Upon our arrival (around 3 pm on Wed Dec 28), I went up to the counter and asked one of your staff (Asian girl with short ponytail) that we would like to dine in. She looked at me as if I am supposed to know what to do already and said “you NEED to wait outside there are people waiting outside”. Yes I know there were about 4 or 5 people standing outside but there were empty tables both indoor and outdoor so I wasn’t sure why they were standing around. At cafe Kentaro, I went up to the counter and the staff was really nice to tell me to take any empty table. Anyway, we went outside and another staff (non-Asian) who was cleaning the tables outside asked how many in our party. We said 2 and we asked if we could sit at the high counter table by the door. She was extremely kind and told us to proceed since the people who were standing outside were waiting for specific outdoor tables. We didn’t end up eating there since the dish we wanted to order (ochazuke) was sold out. We are ok with that since we were there on the later side of the day but we were NOT OK with the attitude of the staff (Asian with short ponytail) who acted as if the cafe is so popular and we were bothering her since she was very busy with...

Today my friends and I decided to eat here for lunch, it was a cold and foggy day and we were ready to eat. As we entered, there was a sign outside the place saying that they were not serving any hot drinks and only tea is available. We were fine with this so we proceeded to enter. There was three of us and the only free table was closest to the door, they decided to place a chair essentially as you walk in. I felt like first of all i was in the way of everyone walking out and in the way of all the wait staff as well. We would have much rather waited until a table for three was open. Anyways, before we were ready to order a different table opened up and we decided to move to a better spot. The food was amazing! I had the pork katsu sandwhich and it was delicious. Good size and great flavour. However, I did also ordered the "fresh mint tea". This is where i felt like i was scammed $5. Now yes, I realize this is only $5 however, what i was served was warm water with three mint leaves. I drank warm flavoured water with a hint of mint. A HINT. I was not happy and asked to have more mint put in, the girl seemed hesitant as she took my tea pot and returned with a little bit more mint but not enough to add any more flavour to the water. I think that if you're gonna have this in the menu, make sure it is worth $5. We brought it up to the girl at the counter as we paid, and she said "it's fresh mint" we are aware but three mint leaves does...