Kyo Ya Izakaya Bar Wentworth Point — Restaurant in Sydney

GO AT YOUR OWN PERIL

I had found this restaurant after seeing an instagram post about this place, detailing the excellent service and hotpot for AYAC deal. The price is 68$ PP, where on weekdays would be 3 + 1 where the 1 would be for free.

However upon visiting I would strongly not recommend this place to any new and returning customers.

Located on the first level of Wentworth point center, the location was easy to locate and we were able to get a table within 10 minuites of waiting. When guided in we were immediately instructed with the guide for how the hotpot works. Included in the premium hotpot set was ONE type of wagyu meat, most likely brisket thinly sliced the SASHIMI however was ONLY allowed ONCE, that one time giving you one piece of salmon, scampi, kingfish and some other type, in the menu. YOU COULD NOT RE ORDER the sashimi and could only order the Nigiri.

The Sashimi was great in quality however left a sour note since we could not enjoy for the premium price tag but understandable. There is not a single bit of information about the promotion, as the terms and conditions are not clearly labled out nor online or on the banner.

After such, I had a read a couple reviews stating the place had incredibly slow service time and tiny portions. I had doubted the reviews but dear god was I wrong.

We had recieved in total for 4 people, 5 platters of meat that weighed no more than 100 grams EACH. The first time we had ordered 8 portion of meat, then 10 (the max) but between each time the portions came, there was an increasingly longer period of waiting where we were left without food.

You may be thinking, the service staff is busy since there are so many tables however by actually increasing the portion size where the customers are not left stranded without food and allows the service staff to actually clean tables and serve customers in need, you would effectively increase the turnover of the restaurant.

However that was not the plan of the restaurant, SMALL PORTIONS AND LONG WAITING TIMES was the plan.

I would strongly advice not to come here and instead go to an actual restaurant for hotpot thats not AYAC at this price tag. Vegtables portions were incredibly generous (for obvious reasons). The only acceptable reason for meat taking so long to come out was that they would slice the meat thinly sliced to demand which is clearly taking advantage of customers or the owner wanted to intentionally slow down the service.

To add to the insult with the incredibly slow service time and tiny portions, we had found a small piece of plastic that had pierced my girlfriends mouth causing a wound, the man had apologised and when asked where the plastic came from, it had come from when they take food out of plastic containers (so it's pre prepped) it can snap due to the cold temperatures making it brittle.

The man had said he would provide a discount and after our order from 20 minuites had come out, we had gone to pay for our bill and was returned with the full price. When asked about the price, he had just politely provided me the bill containing the details.

Incredibly agnoising business to deal with, would definitely avoid at all costs especially in this day and economy. Will definitely also be submitting a report to NSW health and food safety regarding this incident.

Overall; poor food, bad hygiene, unacceptable service times and just not worth the experience.

Imagine you consuming this...

EDIT: Look at other low reviews please. Everyone says the same thing. They are using the discount to get 4.1 stars here. We have 3 stars and they were obviously not happy. Let alone the fact that they made us wait to get our bill as they take other bills first when we opted for the discount. Sorry about my mistake for misunderstanding the discount method. However, again, not worth $68, go for the cheaper option if you’re visiting AND responding to the reply, it was NOT exactly VERY FULL on fathers day. Yes there were other customers but not THAT crowded to explain or use as an excuse as to why we kept getting the wrong food / not getting the food we ordered. We were brought noodles non stop and not even that much meat even though we ordered several times and asked the waitresses about our orders. Thanks for the response tho :) Additionally! I have actually dined at this place before it became an all you can eat place. Food used to be of so much better quality and worth the price ;)

Food was okay - we did the $68 all you can eat. Not really sure if it’s worth this price. Gives you premium wagyu slices and a sashimi boat + some sushi choices. It’s fine but other all you can eat places charge less for more/better food options (in my opinion). Also a lot of the food we ordered didn’t come or the wrong food got served to our table. On a side note, they charge $15 PER HEAD if you have any leftovers which makes sense. They didn’t check our table for whatever reason but they kept bringing us the wrong items we didn’t order so we could not finish them. (Hard to keep track of what we ordered/didn’t order since we were a larger group) it was also hard to get the staff to come to our table… we asked them 3 times to add soup. ALSO, It’s an all you can eat place but the portion sizes especially for the meats were SO small. They limit the amount you can order each time too plus it takes forever for them to bring your food, if they even bring you the right food. The last order is 30 minutes before end time. You’d be lucky if you got enough meat portions

Discounts - they have a few types of discounts which are confusing. We were first told about a 5% discount if we pay by cash, so we went to get cash. We were also told there’s a $10 discount per head if we all did google reviews. So we did both. We didn’t give 5 star reviews because we didn’t feel it deserved it. After we’ve done the reviews we waited for them to finish with another customer, and were told again to wait aside so that they could get payment from yet another customer first (understandable - but it doesn’t take that much time to check our reviews?) given we had already waited for some time. Then the owner proceeded to check each of our reviews and sounded like he wasn’t happy with the 3-4 stars we gave. Honestly wanted to take 1 more star off the moment he did that. We also noticed/remembered after we paid, that the menu has a promotion of 3+1 (pay for 3 people, the 4th person eats free). We were a group of 6 and no one implemented this account. We ended up paying $58 x 6 (which is only by doing the review). Im not sure where the cash discount went / what happened with the 3 + 1 promo

All in all, not worth the money And maybe less kinds of discounts so the business knows what’s going on with...

We had seen many IG videos about this place, and with the winter promotions currently on we were so excited to finally come and try this place. Things started well (so we thought) - before we started I confirmed that the deal was as per the IG post - bring 4 people, pay for 3 (start before 530pm and finish 7pm). Lady said yes. I confirmed again we had 4 adults and 2 kids, one was 4 and one was 6 - confirmed that meant we pay for 3 adults and 1 kid, with the younger kid free. She said yes. Great! In we went.

We were the first table there (5pm). Ordered a bunch of items. The shabu pot was slow to heat up, but that's ok, we waited. And waited. And waited (15 mins passed) until it finally came to boil (table next to us complained about the same thing). At this point only half our initial order arrived. That's all fine, we could wait. And we waited. And waited. Called staff thru the tablet 3 times. Nobody responded. Food eventually trickled in, slowly. By this time we lost patience, and made bigger orders given we didn't have much time left to order. Yet they still missed a few orders. And still never responded to our calls. I had to physically go grab bowls and soya sauce from other tables myself, and flag down waiters to follow up on our food a couple times. Customer service was definitely lacking here.

Quality of food was average. It wasn't bad. But wasn't good. But for a buffet we thought it was fine.

The biggest disappointment was when we went to pay. At the counter, the lady said that while it was bring 4 pay for 3, there was a fine print at the front counter that says that they would apply the free charge to the customer of the lowest value (hence my 6 yo). This was NOT in their IG post (screenshot attached), we were NOT told about it and we weren't shown the small sign with this detail when I confirmed twice about the deal when we walked in. What's worse was we found out after we had paid that if we applied the other deal ($48pp), we would end up with a better price. But of course they didn't tell us that.

I read the reviews after eating here tonight, and it seems there were many similar experiences (in terms of slow service and missing orders). Also noticed the owner does actually take the effort to look at the reviews and respond to them. I can imagine the owner will insist they told us or that we should have seen it etc etc. The truth is we weren't told about it, but it's all done and dusted now and there is no point arguing. I just want the owner to see this and reflect on maybe clarifying their terms and conditions for their promotions, apply the best deal for their customers, and on improving their customer service. We really like their sister sushi train restaurant, so we hope our feedback can help improve...