Tokyo Samba — Restaurant in Sydney

Sorry Tokyo Samba - my food experience was very uninspiring 😞

A big write up in TimeOut and Broadsheet for Chase Kojima (post an amazing stint at Sokyo), and I honestly do not know why? We were really looking forward to a culinary experience of Japanese Peruvian dining, like other notable restaurants in Sydney, but in Bankstown!

My notes on the experience -

We asked the lovely waitress to suggest TS best dishes, and we followed her directions... Ordered: popcorn prawn - this was rather pedestrian. I feel that KFCs popcorn chicken 'pops' better (albeit chicken and potentially too salty), or even a food court's chinese deep fried prawns 'pops' better? Maybe this is a harsh comparison, but this dish was bland.

Raw wagyu tartare - the photos suggest some acid was added to 'cook' the meat. I cannot be sure but it wasn't the raw quality and texture like you'd expect usual raw tartare to be. It was brown in colour and had a very mushy texture to it. Miso cream fraiche was barely noticeable.

Camaro grilled prawn/tuna roll - the sushi rice was a little dry. Tuna slices were flat in flavour. No joke, Sushi Hub has fresher ingredients, and moist rice. The japanese salsa was not fairly represented.

Grilled yakitori spatchcock - it was fine. There were no noticeable skewer markings, nor skewers on the plate (which is fine if you wish to remove it before serving), but unsure why it was called yakitori. I am unsure why the waitress suggested this was a winning main dish. There was nothing exciting about the flavours on this dish. It was edible and filled the hole.

Lastly, crispy brussel sprouts - nice dish. Slightly overdone to attain the 'crispy' part of the dish name. A pile of saffron on top which wasn't on the menu list, but think this wasn't needed. More brussel sprouts in the little bowl would've made this dish better.

I think the team under Chase (Head Chef Tuan) needs to actually taste the food they serve up, look at the presentation of the food, and ask themselves if the dishes represent what they want the public to think of when they think of Japanese Peruvian - in order to draw them to Bankstown. There are plenty of other fusion places in Sydney to visit over Tokyo Samba. (Nikkei, for example)

Maybe tonight was an off night, but I couldn't help but notice other people's recent poor reviews.

Host Thomas Malucelli was lovely and pleasant, and TS waiting staff were patient, polite and helpful in nature and service. Fantastic effort!

And was the pricing right, and deserved of the listed menu dish, in my opinion? Yes, I kind of think so. But only if I got to taste what I actually read from the menu. In this regard, based on what came out of the kitchen, it was over priced.

For the time being, I would feel you get better value by buying an array of meals from your local food court - It would save you about 60% of the bill. Seriously 😳.

It was uninspiring dining considering all the hoohar, and a pretty ordinary meal overall.

TS - please try harder, as you have so much...

I won’t be returning! A Japanese-Peruvian fusion? It seemed more like a Japanese restaurant with ceviche on the menu. Guacamole is not part of traditional Peruvian cuisine. The service was slow, and the restaurant wasn't even busy—there were only four tables occupied. We had to ask three different staff members for salt before we finally received it. We also asked twice for a drink menu and still didn’t get it, and despite asking twice for water, we never received it. The food was brought out haphazardly, one dish after another, with no coordination or timing. They didn’t clear the table until it was time to pay, and then they rushed to clear it as we were paying. It was clear that the staff didn’t know much about what they were serving. When I asked what was mixed into the guacamole that was made at the table, the response was, “Umm, I don’t actually know.” The guacamole itself needed salt, more acidity, and overall more flavor. As for the food, it wasn’t worth the price. For nearly $30, I expected a much larger soft shell crab roll. The roll was cold, as if it had been sitting in the fridge. The crab was over-fried—either the oil was old burnt oil when frying, or the crab was fried so long it became almost unrecognizable. When I asked about the pink wrap around the roll, I was told, “I don’t know.” It also had a fishy taste to it. And no, that's not what fresh soft shell crab tastes like. It was old. Burnt and fishy.... The udon was completely flavorless—no seasoning, just bland and boring. The 500g ribeye steak, which I ordered medium-rare, came out somewhere between rare and blue. I paid an extra $10 for two sauces but received only about 20ml of each. The chimichurri was brown, which is a clear sign that it wasn’t fresh. The BBQ miso sauce tasted like cheap, off-the-shelf MasterFoods BBQ sauce. Paying $5 for that was a joke. The umami fries were equally disappointing. They were bland, with what I assume was seaweed powder on them, but there was no discernible flavor. I asked for these to be served with the steak, but they arrived at the very beginning of the meal. Overall, I was really looking forward to dining here, but I left feeling completely...

(3.5 stars) Bringing the best seafood to Bankstown, Tokyo Samba levels up locally available fishes, offering five ruby red slices of tuna sashimi ($15) draped over wasabi and pandan leaves on crushed ice. This new 100-seater restaurant by Chase Kojima (ex-Sokyo) sits somewhere between an upmarket American steakhouse and a Japanese fusion restaurant. While Kojima calls it Japanese Peruvian, I didn’t get a strong sense of Nikkei cuisine in the dishes I tried.

You will find thin slices of pineapple laid over novo estilo ($26/8 pieces) sushi rolls with salmon and kingfish. The asparagus centre was odd but I could live with it. The frankly weird inclusion of grassy alfalfa sprouts dominated the whole dish. Alfalfa sprouts were equally unappealing but somewhat easier to avoid on the triple-threat carpaccio ($28) of salmon, kingfish and scallop under ginger shallot oil and ‘oriental’ vinaigrette. The sprouts also made their way into the otherwise good grapefruit and mesclun salad ($16) which we ate with a pricy but excellent piece of miso toothfish ($65/180g) cooked in the great-smelling Josper grill.

Front of house, Thomas Malucelli (ex-O Bar), drills a fairly green floor team. Explanations (and appropriate cutlery) were lacking with our umami bread ($12): an odd blend of sweet (honey-infused) crusty Sonoma toast sprinkled with bottarga and served with bottarga butter. Oysters ($35/6)—“Pacifics from Tasmania”—were pre-shucked with their white grape, chives and chilli ponzu dressing dominated by too much soy. There was good chilli bite to the tuna tartare ($18/3) served on slightly too dense crispy rice with aromatic jalapeño slices. The brightest stars were the smoky wagyu nigiri ($18/2) with pomegranate teriyaki. Riffing on this, I reckon it would be more accurate to call this one halal—the drinks list is all...