The KINME Sashimi & Grill Bar — Restaurant in Kuala Lumpur

Had dinner here about a week back with 2 dining companions.

A most enjoyable meal with some pleasant surprises and one laughable let down.

Ordered 3 grilled skewers:

1. Mince pork on a skewer. Delicious. Good flavour with a soft and juicy texture.
2. Chicken chunks. Decent, juicy chicken although nothing to write back about flavour wise.
3. Grilled shiitake mushrooms. Sadly ordinary. A little dry. A dab of teriyaki sauce on it would have elevated this dish.
4. “The dish that almost was”… looking forward to BBQed Ginko nuts but was advised “local ginkgo nuts” were unavailable but if we paid triple the $$$, we could have “imported ginkgo”. We passed.

Ordered 3 types of sashimi:

Salmon, Tuna and Hamachi (if I recall correctly). Excellent! Sadly, this was also the dish we were laughably let down. A serve has 2 pcs. We were a group of 3 dining. I politely suggested surely they could serve us 3pcs of each and charge us for 1.5 serves each.. answer was a simple NO! So me and my friends were left to navigate the intricacies of dining etiquette when the items had mismatched quantities. 🤣

The grilled mackerel (Saba) was the star dish for me. Excellent. Well grilled and was obviously a quality serve of fish. Juicy despite the grilled preparation and no hint of any “fishiness”. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

The pork belly with egg of steam rice was good if not great for me where as one of my dining colleagues swears that this is the ultimate comfort food for her.

We had raw baby corn from Hokkaido to finish (forgot to take a pic) which was also extremely delicious.

Overall a highly enjoyable meal. Would probably have rated 5 stars if they served us 3pcs each of the sashimi...

Came here with friend for dinner, was quite disappointed by the service.

Ordered everything in one shot, 2 didn’t get served. Waited 20 min for these 2 small dishes (yaki-mochi and buttered potato), asked 3 times for the updates, waited another 30 min. Not saying that customers should be served as a Greek god, but NO ONE shows any apologetic attitude through our waiting. Apparently they forgotten to do the order. Also, knowing giving compensation it’s not mandatory, but at least tell your customers that you’re sorry.

Wanted to order a normal grilled ninniku (garlic) with the price RM5.5 , the waitress suggested to try “the garlic from Japan”. Garlic was served later on, but it was apparently overripe, I can see big green sprouts in every clove. When bill came, my friend and I was SO SURPRISED by the price of this ONE garlic, it was RM60. The waitress should’ve really told us when she was introducing us to try “the garlic from Japan”. Didn’t fight with them, garlic has been eaten, just paid and no more next time.

Ordered umeshu without the plum. Still get it with plum. Umeshu with plum has extra charged RM5.

To be fair, the Sashimi for 2 wasn’t too bad and fresh. But still you can get the same thing with 10x better service in many more places in KV.

I will not recommend this place to any...

Weirdly overpriced for its quite standard food, I have never understood why Kinme is quite this popular

We come here often because it’s well located, has outdoor seating (during Covid that matters) and even a private room upstairs. The food however ranges between “quite okay” and “edible”, with nothing ever approaching “incredible,” and often not even “worth the price.”

The cooked lunch specials are fine (the best thing I’ve had at Kinme was this pork-egg rice bowl (like a pork oyakodon)), but don’t come with anything on the side, with even chawanmushi being an add-on.

The most egregiously overpriced dish is their 99RM chirashi sushi which comes with a bog-standard array of sashimi, (maybe an extra chutoro), and is indistinguishable from a normal 40rm chirashi anywhere else. I believe their sushi is supposed to be famous, but after the chirashi experience, i really have no interest in gambling on their 100RM+ sushi offerings

The drinks menu is great, and they have some interesting shochu for reasonable prices, but that’s not enough to save this place from 3-star limbo. Honestly there aren’t many great options for Japanese in Bukit Damansara, but if you can pay this much for a meal at Kinme, a trip to Hartamas is well...