Sento Japanese Kitchen — Restaurant in Sydney

We had a quick lunch today at this little yet cozy Japanese restaurant close to St. Ives Shopping Village, after we finished our weekly grocery shopping. Honestly we did not expect much since the place looks old and less inspiring from outside, but we took a chance and we're glad for it. The menu is not too long, but not too restricted either. They have sushi, udon, ramen, donburi and bento set for both lunch and dinner.

The lunch sets are very good value where you get a decent choice of standard Japanese dishes with extra miso soup and possible topping of sashimi, gyoza dumpling or matcha / sesame ice-cream for less than $15 / person or less than $20 / person with some additional toppings. We ordered the grilled mackerel set (come with rice, salad and miso soup) and the ten-don set (various tempuras on rice plus miso soup). We also ordered the gyoza dumpling and sesame sauce go-mae spinach as side-dish plus mix ice-cream for desserts. The dishes were good / decent and quite authentic Japanese-style cooking especially the ten-don was the highlight. We spent just less than $40 for such satisfying lunch. If you're after high quality Japanese food, you can get them in Neutral Bay or Crows Nest restaurants with higher price-tags. This place closer to home offers a decent alternative, though not as good as them, but with better value for money. They accept credit card payment without additional surcharge which is another plus for me.

The service from staff is OK considering this is a casual restaurant. The ambience is decent though the place looks a bit old, but I like their place being quite (not too bustling) and chilled in the middle of daylight heat where you can have decent lunch and nice chat with your...

The customer service team needs some major adjustments here. In my Uber eats order, I asked for a 'spicy' version of their chicken teriyaki. In the past,I have ordered from other places that have ignored such instructions (I always ask for spicy and it often goes unnoticed) so I was very specific that I would like it spicy otherwise I would leave an honest (not good) review. Due to leaving this note, I was quite suddenly harassed by receiving multiple calls from the restaurant (at 8pm at night mind you) telling me that leaving a negative (honest) review was not something I should do. This was aggressively and unkindly approached, I was asked if 'i was joking ' multiple times. ... no. Definitely not joking and how extremely condescending to ask that.

I tried to explain that all I was saying was that my review would be truthful based on my experience, but the person on the phone was very aggressive and fixated on the 'bad review' terminology rather than actually listening to anything I had to say as a customer. Overall a horrible customer service experience handled very poorly. I'm not commenting on food quality, but their customer service needs a huge amount of work and I will never order from here again based on my...

Fairly good experience here but more of a 3.5 stars. The tempura prawns and veg were quite tasty and the tempura veg is something I really enjoyed for taste and the mix of texture. The gyoza and sushi roll I found to be a bit below standard, they didn’t offer much flavour, maybe they didn’t use the best ingredients for them, they never lit up my taste buds. The beef teriyaki was cooked perfectly but again lacked some flavour, it could have done with a tad more sauce. The ramen noodles were quite good (and I’m not a big noodle fan). The noodles themselves were nothing special but the broth I found quite delightful. I’m not sure I would make a fuss to go back here but I wouldn’t mind another try. Staff were friendly and service was...