Robata Jones — Restaurant in Sydney

We had a quick lunch recently on rainy Saturday and ordered a few dishes from their lunch menu, i.e. the grilled dried mackerel fish set, the saikyo-yaki cod neck set and a side dish of deep-fried popcorn tako or octopus. All dishes were prepared with authentic Japanese style and taste very good. We love the fish sets, especially the one grilled with sweet, Edo-style saikyo miso. The prices charged are good value for your money, where the lunch set not only comes with the fish / meat, but also with a bowl of rice, a bowl of miso soup and a choice of Japanese salad or gomae spinach. Most customers including us chose the spinach, which is more traditional Japanese veggie side-dish.

The place ambience is not bad for a casual robata izakaya restaurant in a quite suburb like Artarmon. The place is small, but nicely decorated and has good lighting. Customer services from staff member were reasonable, though there was a problem with their EFTPOS terminal which required all customers to pay cash. This is a big problem for suburb like Artarmon with limited access to ATM machines, but luckily we had enough cash to pay for our lunch.

We visited this place the next week for the premium Hokkaido rice dinner and ordered a few dishes like grilled cuttle-fish and ox-tongue, grilled ox-tongue (gyu-tan don) set, grilled eel (unagi don) set, grilled wagyu and pork-belly kushi-yaki skewers, and the famous izakaya style drink, Highball. They're all quite good dishes, but we particularly like the skewers and the cuttle-fish. The eel sauce was a bit too sweet for my liking. The Hokkaido rice really made big, good difference in our enjoyment for the evening. This time around, the EFTPOS machine...

Robata Jones - A quaint place on the quieter side of Artarmon.

Nestled in little “Tokyo”, this restaurant and it’s neighbourhood gives you the remnant of when we could travel. The restaurant focuses on Izakaya and Charcoal based dishes, the ones you find on a Robata!

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Highlights: It’s great value for money and you know that the flavours + quality are there! It’s only complimented by the service of the staff who were friendly and attentive.

Review: Wagyu Skewer - $4.80 Recommend. A sweet soy-based glaze tare that compliments the Wagyu Rib Finger pieces. Chewier than I expected it to be due to the cut of meat, however, the sauce brings the meat to be irresistible.

Chicken Thigh Skewer - $4.80 Recommend. Leaning more to the firmer side of doneness for a chicken thigh, but with that tare lathered on top.. once again, irresistible.

Grilled Mackerel Small - $14.50 Recommend. Probably the most value for money I have experienced within a Sydney-based Japanese restaurant! It comes with rice and miso soup and the “small” was definitely a lot more than expected! It was cooked very well - when you break into it, you can see the juices oozing out.

Grilled Unagi Hitsumabushi - $19.50 Reconsider. Don’t get me wrong, the Unagi rice bowl was great! Albeit the Eel was slightly over cooked, once again their tare and what I imagine an eel done well, OFT, it would be perfect! That being said, my taste didn’t take to their dashi broth as the taste was on the fishier side, so I would reconsider on just having the Grilled Unagi Rice instead.

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Will return! -...

I have been a loyal customer of Robata Jones for a long time. The food is consistently excellent, but occasionally, the service from the staff leaves me frustrated. While they handle food delivery and related tasks well, I recently had an experience that left me quite unhappy.

I booked a table for two, and when we arrived, there were other tables for two still available. However, the staff seated us at the smallest table. I explained that we typically order a lot of food, which would quickly fill the table, and requested to move to a slightly larger one. Unfortunately, they refused and assured us they would slow down the pace at which the food was served. But that wasn’t the point—I didn’t want the food to come out slowly.

As expected, the food arrived promptly and completely filled the table, making it very difficult to eat comfortably. Meanwhile, the other table I had requested was given to guests who arrived later, ordered far fewer dishes, and had plenty of spare space left on their table. They probably didn’t even order a quarter of what we did.

I believe the staff should make an effort to prioritize seating arrangements based on the needs of their guests. If a group mentions that they plan to order a lot of food, it should be taken into consideration. Even after our order was placed, the staff could have realized the situation and adjusted the seating before the other...