Ruma Dining — Restaurant in Sydney

I never write reviews but VERY disappointing service and terrible bottomless matcha deal, and not allergen friendly!!!!! Don’t bother.

My friends and I came for the bottomless matcha (we booked this session rather than a regular seating), and no one came to speak to us about the ‘rules’ of the bottomless. We were seated, given normal menus, and then no one came near us for 20-30 minutes. We had to wave someone over to take our order, and the restaurant was not full nor busy. We mentioned we wanted the bottomless matcha and we asked a few questions as there is barely any information/terms and conditions about the deal online. We were told we could only order the same type of matcha drink each round, (e.g. everyone has to order strawberry matcha for one round) which was never specified online and highly frustrating when some of my group couldn’t drink certain matchas due to allergies, not to mention the fact we all have different preferences.

Our waitress Alejandra (who was apparently the assistant restaurant manager) did not listen to what we wanted and continued to get our order wrong. The waitress didn’t ask if we had any allergies which is very standard for restaurant workers (I’ve been a waitress myself)… so we quickly mentioned a severe allergy to fish, yet fish came on the same plate we had to share, touching the other foods. After she left, we realised one of the girls forgot to request Oat milk for her matchas (as she kept messing our food order up so much, we were so focused on that), so we flagged down another waiter (as she was no where to be seen half the time) and let them know about the milk. They brought out our drinks and forgot to make the one matcha with oat milk, so they remade it for us and all was okay. We then went to order another matcha off our normal waitress, and she got uptight and defensive when we requested “and one with oat milk please, same as last time”. We were so confused with her reaction, as all we did was kindly remind about the oat milk, and she continued to become rude and defensive saying “well you didn’t tell me the first time you ordered”. It was highly immature and inappropriate, and not the customers fault if our waitress disappears for so long that we have to flag down another waiter to let them know of our friends milk allergy. She was so rude and made it such a horrible dining experience. We asked to speak to a manager and she told us she was assistant manager… maybe Ruma should be reconsidering their management team then… 😳

Further, all our matcha was spilled everywhere when being put on our table, our cups were chipped, and the booking was for 4 people but only had 3 lots of food items (e.g. 3 hash browns, 3 pieces of zucchini, 3 pieces of halloumi)… why wouldn’t you put 4 of each so everyone gets one of their own????

There needs to be a better communication between staff. If a table which isn’t apart your section alerts you about an allergy or food order, you tell the waiter that’s looking after that section. That’s just common sense and how restaurants work… which clearly is not what happened today, and they took the staffs poor communication out on us instead.

So disappointing. Would not recommend.

EDIT: it’s extremely sad and immature to see these fake 5 star reviews coming in this morning, trying to drown out my friends and clearly another tables reviews about our terrible experience with Alejandra. There’s literally more reviews than people that were in the restaurant this morning lmaoooo 🤣 We’ve since called the restaurant to and she continued to be rude to us, despite letting her know my friend is feeling sick after the food contamination. She told us “she’s a GP in columbia so the reaction would have been instant”, trying to insinuate we are lying. So unprofessional! Stop getting your other staff and friends to write fake reviews to get your ratings up. Just accept your service...

we are really disappointed and appalled at the service of one staff member. Reservation was made a week ago, we've travelled 1.5hrs on public transportation on a rainy day for a birthday brunch at Ruma (yes silly, but we wanted to keep the plan we'd made despite the weather). Only to arrive & not have a table and directed to seating outside. Not wanting to deal with more rain as we were already wet, I asked what had happened with our reservation and they had to refer to 2 other staff members before the person who appeared to be in charge for that morning, Alejandra (unsure as to spelling) told us our reservation for "window seating" is outside and showed us it's the seats outside that are window seating, with a tone as if we were at wrong. I've included a screenshot of your website that clearly states window seating is INSIDE the restaurant. There was no apology or 'let me check', we were spoken to as if we've somehow done something wrong, like it was incredulous to ask about a reservation we had made and had even called to check in the morning to confirm. Is it too much to expect that if you made a reservation, you'd be shown to your table on arrival? To add to this we had even called the restaurant at 10am and confirmed with the person on the phone that it was indoors we booked because of the rain. She said quite annoyed to give her 5 mins to see what she can do to get us seats inside. This could suggest reservations aren't kept. Yet the entire time we were dining this staff member had reminded the tables around us of the 1.5hrs dining time limit suggesting reservations are prioritised.

When we were ordering drinks 2 staff members told us we could order any of the matchas from the bottomless menu as long as we've finished our drink and one at a time. Alejandro on taking our order for drinks - again speaking to us as if we've done something wrong, "you've already ordered a cloud matcha you can't have another one". Literally a minute before she said that when we were chatting to another staff member and commented on how nice the cloud matcha was as it was not as sweet as the strawberry said we could order the same again and it does not matter.

Yet when asking for our bill Alejandra (spelling likey incorrect) had charged us for an extra cloud matcha and said "I told you you can't order the same drink twice". It's not about the money as much as it is about the principal of it.

I left the restaurant teary and trembling on my birthday, a brunch I had looked forward to all week, feeling as if the whole time we had done something wrong. We tried hard to flip our morning around by focusing on positives, and hoped to leave happier than when we arrived - utterly disappointed and such a shame given the food and drinks were fabulous for the price, the eggs fluffy, grilled vegetables👌🏾though under salted was still good, matcha divine and the other staff were lovely, thank you too the one male staff who was a smiling face and the gal who served all the matcha drinks . Never again. I would appreciate if someone in management gives us a call about this morning's experience.

For a restaurant that markets itself as "home" - this was far...

Insane that the restaurant's response to REAL feedback is to have paid/fake/friends complete reviews that specifically mention things that were referred to as needing improvement in our review - ie poor service by one staff member. Instead of responding to the REAL reviews and acknowledging the experience of your customers and investigating this - within the span of an hour of both my and other diners reviews you've added fake/paid reviews so that your ratings go up.

It's truly unbelievable that in 2025 a restaurant, especially one at double bay would treat their customers so poorly and respond to their reviews in such unethical ways. This needs to be reported.

You did not honour a reservation made a week prior. Pretended not to have a reservation from us when we arrived. Schooled us on what window seating means - that it's outside in the rain when your website clearly states it's indoors and the person on the phone prior to our arrival confirmed it is indoors. Ma'am have you looked at your website? Not apologising for the reservation not being honoured instead being annoyed and upset at your customer. It was mentioned in the reservation that it was for a birthday - it was an extremely uncomfortable horrid morning instead. Your manager has different views to the staff (who were lovely btw), not having translated T&Cs to them so we were receiving contradicting information from the manager and staff about the bottomless matchas. Charging us for a drink even though a staff member took my order for a cloud matcha informing me that it was totally fine that I had 2 of them and that I won't be charged for ordering the same drink. Responding to negative reviews through paid/fake/friend reviews to increase the rating of the restaurant. This SO unethical and reportable!!

at 10am on 29 March you had a 4.1 rating and 28 reviews. After 3 negative reviews (we saw that other diners left reviews exactly at the same time who also has a similar bad experience with the manager Alejandra) the rating went down to 3.6. Within the next hour there were so many fake reviews bringing the rating back up to 4.1 with no response to our GENUINE reviews. You deleted comments on your Instagram post where your Genuine, real customers have left real accounts of their poor experience at your restaurant instead of reaching out to them to find out what had happened.

This truly shows your lack of care toward your customers rather than responding with genuine curiosity and a strive to better the experience...