Mr Stonebowl Parramatta — Restaurant in Sydney

My group of four went on an early July Monday evening at around 5:30pm to avoid a crowd and queue that usually formed there around 6-7pm.

The decor and ambience was good, everything was clean and new as this place only opened 2 months ago, but I felt our table and seating space were small, cramped and thus uncomfortable. I observed that was true for most tables, with the exception of the big round tables reserved for large groups of 6+ people.

On to the food and drinks, there was a physical menu that showcased photos of many dishes, but you order through a webpage by scanning the QR code on the table with your phone. The menu has alcoholic beverages but in reality none was available because apparently the restaurant hadn’t obtained a liquor licence yet. We ordered 8 dishes in total. All of them were presented well and visually appealing, but the taste was a mixed bag so here are my ratings for each: Good: crab & mango in pastry, sliced lamb with chilli celery garlic, steamed egg tofu with seafood in stone pot, stir fried udon with pork in truffle sauce Okay: jellyfish salad with okra & clam, pan fried pork buns Bad: Singapore style barramundi, diced chicken in stone pot

I guess their kitchen must have half-cooked meat and fish dishes ready, and only needed to reheat and plate to order, because all our meat dishes came out first in rapid succession! The barramundi was the first to be served, 5 minutes after we ordered. You could tell it was microwaved then had sauce poured on because only the surface was hot, and inside the fish was still cold. The chicken and lamb came within the next 5 minutes, and the chicken was some of the driest and toughest I’ve had in recent memory. Next came the crab mango which really should’ve been the first dish to be served as it was an entree, followed by the steam egg tofu. Both were fantastic. The jellyfish salad only had one or two very small pieces of clams in it… and the pan fried pork buns were alright but the skin was soft all around and lacked a crunchy golden brown bottom. It’s worth noting these 7 dishes all came to table in a span of 11 minutes. Finally, the udon noodles I ordered after we were done with all the previous dishes was probably the highlight of the night, big portion enough for 4 people, plenty of pork and tasty truffle sauce cooked fresh and hot, only for about $17.

Now the big issue with this place is the service.The floor staff basically only bring you food and take away your empty plates, and can’t help you with anything else or know much about their own store. As mentioned earlier, there is QR ordering so they already don’t take your order. When I asked them to slow down the pace of serving the food because it was cramming up our small table, I was told “that’s not up to us waiters”. When I asked if there was a surcharge for card payment, one waitress said 20%, the waitress next to her concurred with 20%. It’s like they don’t have any common sense or have never gone to shops in Sydney before. I had to go ask at the counter to get the correct answer of 2%.

The saving grace of this place is the cheap price and the amount of food you get for that price. Most dishes were

Worst experience ever!!!! The matter of fact this ain’t even my first time coming to this store. But today when I came to have dinner with my family. This worker with blotchy brownish blondish hair with black roots grown out and glasses was not just extremely rude but also had the worst customer service.

Not restricting to rolling eyes at customers when being asked for a bottle of water politely, also being rolled eyes on when being asked for tissues and annoyingly gave tissues to me. Moreover, I understand if she seemed to be appealed to my brother, but the look she gave when she was looking at him was absolutely disgusting 🤢

In addition, even though I have to compliment the environment, the food as well as the employees other than the staff with glasses previously, the water was also tremendously awful to drink, not that I’m complaining about the taste of the water since it doesn’t come with any flavour, but a disgusting smell and taste of chlorine. I’m not sure what kind of strategy this is to lure customers into buying drinks in their store. But I have to question if they are trying to provide chemicals for the pools or feed humans.

IAt this rate, I don’t even care about the water, but the service of the blotchy blonde wannabe worker this lady has provided is absolutely disgusting and a disgrace towards the hospitality industry. Since I have also been a worker within the hospitality industry, I totally understand that she might have been experiencing a bad day, but this is definitely not the excuse to express her anger towards other customers that did not contribute to her bad day. Again, I am going to say that in am absolutely disappointed with the staff that we encountered today as a am a huge fan of me stone bowl and I have not just been to a few of its franchises but this is the definitely the first franchise that I have experienced the worst customer service.

Not that I’m writing this review to stop others to go to this store, but to ask the manager and owner to really look into situations like such that customers experience in their store due to these types of staffs. It would be great if the store could be better maintained to ensure its success and customer rate in the future. I hope to come to this store in the future again to see better...

Went in for dinner with the fam. Was seated at a 4 person booth up against the window. Was extremely squashy and we had to limit ourselves on what we could order as the table already looked full just with our empty plates and cups.

Ordered the steamed barramundi, Tofu with lobster, fried beans, fried dumplings, noodles, braised pork belly, fried mushrooms and fried rice.

Tbh all dishes smelled fragrant, however the taste wasn't perfect. The dishes could have all done with more salt. The beans, tofu and fried rice were quite nice, the texture of the braised pork belly was amazing (just lacked salt), the fried mushrooms smelled amazing and had a nice five spice aroma (however, again lacked salt). The texture of the buns were great, taste was so so. The drinks were all quite sweet.

My only two issues were the table size and lack of salt. We seriously had to play tetris with the dishes just to ensure there was room on the table for all the dishes we ordered. We had to ask for a stool for the rice and teapot and we placed cups and other items on our seats just to make room. I feel the booths are probably better suited for parties of 2 as there would then be sufficient room on the table for the food.

I feel all parties of 4 or more should be given a round table or at least stagger the food out or maybe add those anti pasti stands on the table like they do at Italian restaurants so that more items can fit.

The table/reservation system needs to be looked into again as we barely saw that white piece of paper up against the bright white background.

Food came out pretty fast with exception to the fried rice and mushrooms (which we received when we almost finished).

Customer service was amazing though so couldnt fault that.

I’m sorry to say, however, at the moment, the Burwood Stonebowl is much better. I’ll just put this down to teething issues as it’s only recently opened. I really hope the Parramatta location becomes just as great as the...