Sushi Tengoku — Restaurant in Sydney

Sushi Tengoku (ST) had always been one of my favourite restaurants since I discovered it back in 2012. The food has always been exceptional, which had kept me coming back over the years. But the experience I had tonight at the restaurant was utterly atrocious and definitely had changed my preference in restaurants; that is, food can only taste as good as its service.

Tonight was Friday; a date night for my partner and I. When we arrived, it was around 7pm and noticed the restaurant was only partially seated with customers as we walked in. Given that we've been to ST in the past, we were familiar with their menu, knew what we wanted and made our order quickly - 1 x soft shell crab roll, 3 x Aburi Salmon and 1 x Spicy hot pot.

After 30 minutes, we noticed the surrounding tables of customers already had their food served (even those customers who were seated after us) and we raised the concern to the same restaurant manager who I handed over my order sheet initially.

Moments later the manager came back looking puzzled and presented us with an order sheet of another table. I quickly corrected him and clarified the order with him in words. He exited and came back a moment later with a new order sheet, claiming that they had lost our order!!! I held my breath, refilled the order sheet quickly and handed back to him.

The next second you know, another manager came over to our table serving a hot pot, which we saw them handed over to another table at least five minutes ago! My partner and I both had a good look at the hot pot and we were sure that the food had already been touched by someone and I questioned the manager how long ago the food was made.

He replied, "It was only made just a moment ago but went to the wrong table." There was no apology and no sense of remorse in his tone. At that point, both my partner and I felt unwelcomed and undervalued as customers. We stood up and left our table. As I walked towards the door, I told him to cancel our order. He looked at me in the eyes and his final response to us was "OK".

I WOULD NOT recommend Sushi Tengoku to anyone if you want a restaurant that values their customers and treats them with respect. If you don't mind being undervalued,...

LIAR YOU DID NOT GIVE US FIVE PRAWNS! WE ORDERED 15 PRAWNS AND GOT 12 ONLY! I cannot expressed how angry and disappointed I am now. I accidentally pressed delete instead of editing my previous comment because I'm fully heated now. For those whom didn't get to read my previous review, I've order two dishes of tempura prawns, it states clearly on the menu and order form that there are 5 prawns in a serve. When the dish arrived there were only 4 on each plate, so we got 8 prawns instead of 10. So we consulted a waitress and she looked at us as if we lied to her, we insisted the dishes hadn't been touched and so she asked the kitchen and told us they were serving a different prawn on that night (sat 13/5). I've told her it is not what has been written on the menu, she said to me "it is what it is". The story doesn't ended here, the owner replied to my previous comment, apologising to the mistake and said extra prawns had been offered to us quickly, are you serious? You must be joking right? You know I can't replied to the comment and so you are trying to make me sound greedy in the public? What your staff had done to me is make us ordering another plate of 4. So according to your menu we should have got 15 prawns in total and we only received 12. The offer extra prawn thingy had never happened to us. This is absolutely disgusting and you've against the law, you could have acknowledged us when we first place the order, or told us when the plates were being served, and could have also invited us back to your restaurant for complimentary whatever. But What have you done? You've lied to everyone on google review, people ain't foolish. This is a serious matter and I'll take to ACCC for sure. For your information, we've paid full price for everything we've ordered on the night. And you owed me 3 prawns and failed to comply the law as you didn't provided what you've written on the menu. Stop making it sounds like you've rectified the problem and I'm still complaining...

To be honest the food was worthy for a 3-star, but our experience at the end with the staff at cashier was shocking.

Food was decent but didn’t taste the freshest compared with some other sushi/sashimi places. Rice fell apart so easily as soon as you picked it up with chopsticks (which normally wouldn’t happen for nigiri sushi).

When we’re at the cashier, the staff didn’t ask how we’d like to pay and showed us the price which was actually with credit card surcharge (or the original bill amount?). She didn’t mention the discount if paid by cash, luckily we saw the sign so we gave her cash for a cheaper bill. Okay I get it so far, many restaurants do this kind of tricks. To make it worse, she was meant to give us $4.15 for change but insisted that they ran out of 5c and 10c coins so she only gave us $4, with a smiley face hinting we should just forget about that 15c and make it as tips. I probably wouldn’t mind to “tip” that 15c if she clearly ask for our agreement, but unfortunately this was how they dealt with this scenario - Assuming customers should just tip the change shortfall and making NO effort to ask their manager/owner for emergency coin exchange. We couldn’t seem to win this argue so had to leave with shock. Dodgy and unacceptable.

(Update after the business owner/manager responded my review: Thank you for taking my feedback promptly and seriously, I really appreciate your offer to make up, I’d like to pass on your offer to a customer who visited your restaurant today (maybe like a kid or someone who’s birthday is today?). What I wish to happen from this feedback is to train your staff to handle a similar situation better, and I’m sure you’ve already thought about...