Kuon Omakase — Restaurant in Sydney

(4.5 stars)

Japanese fine diner, Kuon Omakase have responded to COVID-19 by erecting clear Perspex screens between diners in the well-lit, wood-lined space. We joined just six other diners for the omakase experience ($180/head) that kicked off with chawanmushi topped with snow crab & gleaming red caviar pearls.

Executive Chef Hideaki Fukada is a joy to spend time with, what with his big grin, and cheeky sense of humour. He quickly sets us up with the money tart: toro taku monaka. The tart itself is a crisp delivery vehicle for osetra caviar applauded by a sea urchin chorus with added texture from toro and daikon radish. Punctuate your two bites with sake to clean your palate for the second flavour peak. Freshly grated Tasmanian wasabi is the first blast from kochi kobujime, before the kombu comes up as you chew the pale and toothsome flathead.

Tempura—prawn, all parts, and asparagus—is notable for the add-on $20: shiso leaf wrapped uni. Drag it through the salt for the intriguing taste of urchin set like a baked custard rather than raw. Hartley truffles and foie gras ($30) make the other hot dish—Kobe wagyu—more decadent without spoiling your appetite for what is to follow.

The sushi course at Kuon Omakase gives you ten pieces of nigiri sushi followed by a hand roll. Tucking into ginmutsu nitsuku (toothfish) with sansho pepper, we watch Executive Chef Hideaki Fukada’s knife-work as he prepares the neta (toppings). They’re presented on a board to each dining pair before being doled out one-by-one.

It starts with akami tuna marinated in katsu soy sauce (dashi shoyu) that you eat upside down so you get a good blast of Tasmanian wasabi. We work our way through an array of fishes, each elegantly draped over red rice that is made using akazu (red vinegar). There’s salmon; bass grouper with shiso leaf; and John Dory steamed in sake under a globule of sauce made from its liver given a gentle kiss from the blow torch.

We eat New Zealand imperador; then armorhead. Otoro is unctuous and tasty, then there’s dry aged barracuda (pike fish) that’s blasted with heat, before a sliver of chutoro cut from a 80kg tuna caught in Ulladulla waters then aged for seven days. Golden-eye alfonsino eats particularly well ahead of the proffered uni, wrapped with toro in crisp sheets of nori made from seaweed produced in Saga Prefecture.

It’s all enjoyable, right down to the square of tamagoyaki presented at the finish, with the non-challenging toppings kept central against tasty sushi rice and gentle soy, though nothing quite blows my mind. They also give you dessert azuki mizu-yokan, a red bean agar jelly.

The dining experience here in a purpose built restaurant theatre sets it apart from most of Sydney’s other omakase contenders. The balance between the front half of the menu and the sushi course is particularly well considered. With all the add-ons and booze, it is a very...

Update: They replied to me 6/11/2025 5:07pm apologising and saying they will assist me with rearranging the booking but I told them I am not dining at Kuon anymore. The chef also replied at 10:38pm same day and he confirmed the omakase is 100% going from Darling Square to Surry Hills, meaning my concern has been valid and no one in their team picked up this issue. They didn’t update their booking system so I got the wrong time slot and address noted on my booking confirmation. But it was me investigating online like a psycho because I tried not to ruin a birthday dinner and that’s how I found out it’s not even the right address. They didn’t take the initiative to fix it or contact me. I am glad that I asked and didn’t end up dining there.

Original: I booked a table for 2 on 10 October before their new store in Surry Hills opened. It was for a birthday dinner later in November.

I was checking Kuon’s instagram page and noticed they made posts about moving to Surry Hills. It also says that the Darling Square store will be switching to a Ramen concept (and it sounds like it’s temporarily closed). This is really confusing to me as the Darling Square address was noted on my booking confirmation, so I dm messaged their Instagram page try to obtain clarification and received no reply after waiting for weeks. I ended up deleting the messages as I felt like an idiot so I don’t have the screenshots for it.

I tried not to overthink but still I don’t want to mess up a birthday occasion so I sms messaged the number they provided on the booking website and their website t&c. Waited from Monday morning to Thursday not a single acknowledgment of my messages. Then I messaged the chef Aki and doesn’t seem like he will respond neither.

The occasion is in another three weeks but I will need plenty of time to book with another restaurant. I think we all know how limited the omakase spots are in Sydney.

There is no clarification on the locations when booking, they even made those Instagram posts to make it worse and more confusing. I just wanted a confirmation to avoid any issues on an important day and it is really disappointing. I kept investigating online and saw other people with the same experience with their booking system. Not sure who thought it’s a good idea having just one channel to communicate with your customers and it’s not even monitored by your staff properly.

At the end I gave up trying so I requested cancelling the booking. Let’s see if they will actually acknowledge my request. I have also cancel the booking...

Alright there are a good few things that I could talk about this place that just somehow made it the worst omakase experience in my life… Me and my partner had arrived 15 minutes early to the place expected to be seated and maybe grabbed a drink or something while we waited. The staff/manager wouldn’t even let us in. And I am talking about 10degrees outdoor on the night. So really, not a very pleasant/considering start of the night. When we were finally seated, we couldn’t help but noticed dust…DUST on the ceiling lights which honestly tells you so much about hygiene of this place. They somehow got outstanding design award - but hey not sure about cleanliness and hygiene really. The chefs were clearly poorly communicated between each other. In fact, the seemingly more senior chef was constantly putting pressure and criticizing the junior chefs doing on a constant basis, in front of the customers. Really - the whole dining experience just seemed to be a recreation of a workplace bully which was unpleasant and uneasy for us. Not to mention - it was weird enough to be soy sauce into the sushi rice which honestly completely masked the ‘freshness’ of the sashimi. The reason why there was a quote for freshness is because the sashimi A) was poorly cut B) the supposedly bluefin tuna otoro was chewy as a chewing gum - it was of poor quality to a point you just had to swallow it and not wanting to chew or let it linger in your mouth for more than seconds. The menu set up was poorly thought - where you had all the hot food first. And somehow with the so-called omakase sushi set, they didn’t bother thinking starting bland and move the way up. They started off with tuna belly which was already super filling (not in a good way) and made the rest of the sushi very dull and bland. This is not the end - the presenting dishes were freshly out from the dishwasher. The plates were still covered in water where the staff was wiping the water off in front of us which was honestly very unappetizing. They also used the same pair of chopsticks for sashimi and hot food I.e. the duck sausage or whatever that was which was honestly human basic common sense.

All in all, it was an unpleasant and dissatisfying experience. I would never recommend anyone to...