Manmaruya

3.8 Below Average

Food  4      Ambience  5      Service  3      Value  3     

The whole dining experience started off reasonably well until a waitress dropped a jug of water, meant for the table next to us, on the lap of my lovely 8 month and 3 weeks pregnant wife. Accidents happen but they didn't even make much of an apology or try to do anything about it. Eventually when the waitress noticed the look in my wife's eye that could have been interpreted as "I'm pregnant and hormonal and if you don't fix this now you will die" so she offered her a few serviettes and eventually someone came with a tea towel.

So the food ... I had the teriyaki beef bento box that comes with some gyoza. The beef were strips of the driest rubbery tasteless beef you could imagine and the gyoza weren't great either. My wife had a ramen that you wouldn't write home about either. We had eaten a few times here before and it wasn't bad but after this experience we won't be back.

May 03, 2012 

5.3 Average

Food  7      Ambience  6      Service  1      Value  7     

I'm a japanese food fan and the food here is good. But customer service is terrible and the same you would expect from a chinese restaurant and that's because the waiters are mostly chinese. Sorry but if you call yourself a japanese restaurant then you must learn the how to treat your customer from the japanese.

Mar 19, 2012 

7 Recommended

Food  8      Ambience  7      Service  5      Value  8     

Food here is pretty good. Ramen is decent. Their teriyaki salmon bento box is good value, as is their chicken namban (chicken fillet served with mayo and crushed egg sauce). Service is not what you expect from a 5 star restaurant but I don't have that expectation when they only charge prices you would expect from a noodle eating place. Staff are doing their best and for a quick midweek bite, this place is good enough for me to come back again and again.

Dec 06, 2011 

5 Average

Food  5      Ambience  5      Service  5      Value  5     

Although I wouldn't rate this as a good Japanese restaurant, it is definitely the best one in Hurstville. Unfortunately all of the Japanese restaurants in Hurstville seem to be run by Chinese - resulting in less than Japanese quality. The food is ok. Sashimi is reasonably fresh, Ramen is ok and the beef tataki is nice.

Nov 28, 2011 

3.3 Below Average

Food  4      Ambience  3      Service  2      Value  4     

Went for dinner tonight, joined a small indistinct queue or group of people loitering near the doorway. There seems to be no order on who is waiting.
Got seated right next to the sliding door, very irritation on a cold evening when people keep walking out and not closing the door.

I ordered the teriyaki beef bento which turned out to be very chewy and overcooked and the sauce was a clumpy glaze sitting on the top of the meat so the flavour wasn't really throughout all the meat. My friend had the karage chicken bento which she got once quarter through before finding a moth in the salad. She almost threw up at the site.

It took me 5 mins to summon one of the waiters while all the food was getting cold. After pointing at the moth he embarassingly ran off with the bento without explaining or apologising. Meanwhile I was forced to continue with my meal as my friend waited. Finally the new bento arrived but she was no longer hungry so we left. I regret not taking a picture of the moth to post here, we were just in shock.

There was no mention of apology when I went to pay for the bill. Only after asking if they washed their salad was I offered a 20% discount, which actually ended up only being 10% when I checked my credit card receipt later.

Seems like this place is run by chinese who only care about bums on seats and not attention to service like most japanese places do. Will not eat here again.

Sep 08, 2011 

4 Below Average

Food  6      Ambience  5      Service  2      Value  3     

Shocking service. They don't know how to prioritise tasks and instead choose to keep customers standing instead of taking orders later.

Food is so-so but not really worth the price. I could easily find better in the city for the same price, which is sad, considering its the only 'decent' ramen place in Hurstville (though I'm not sure it's actually run by Japanese). The atmosphere is just way too noisy and the food comes out one by one. So if 1 person ordered a sushi/sashimi dish, another a udon and two people ordered ramens, only the ramens will come out together, the rest will come out separately and probably with a 10 minutes gap (thats how long we waited, the others didn't know whether they should start eating or not...).

Food-wise, the pork broth is super salty. Theres not much noodles included. Stingy and inconsistent with the toppings on the noodles. The chicken broth is ok but we were really thirsty afterwards, too much msg/salt?.. oh and stay away from the tempuras.

Aug 14, 2011 

3.5 Below Average

Food  5      Ambience  4      Service  1      Value  4     

I totally agreed with the person who rated the restaurant 3 points and said the waitress was rude. We ate at the one in Hurstville last night and when our dinner set came, the soup and salad were missing. After waiting for 10 minutes, we tried to tell the waitress, before I finished talking, she walked away saying Ok Ok. The same waitress served us a few weeks ago and she was as rude.

When asked what's in the risotto, she said it's noodle. We had to tell her that risotto is rice, and we just wanted to know what's in the rice. She stood there and said coldly, 'I'm not sure.' When asked if she could check, very reluctantly she went to the kitchen and asked. It's like we're troubling her. Such service is appalling and unacceptable. So it depends on who serves you for you to determine whether the service is good or bad, or extremely bad as with this waitress.

Aug 14, 2011 

3 Below Average

Food  7      Ambience  3      Service  1      Value  1     

Food would've been better if the service was better. I went there by myself and was asked to move to another table Twice as they wanted to accommodate a larger group. The second time I was asked to switch to another table, I had already started eating! The waitress was also really rude. I won't be returning to the shop in the near future. Such arrogance!

Jul 24, 2011 

9.5 Highly Recommended

Food  10      Ambience  8      Service  10      Value  10     

I think this restaurant is great. The servings are really generous and the food and sushi is fresh. I really liked the sushi platter with an assortment of tuna, salmon, prawn, and scallops. Yum, yum. Service was quick and attentive.

Jul 11, 2011 

2.8 Not Recommended

Food  4      Ambience  3      Service  1      Value  3     

Their food was average, but would never go back to this place because their service was terrible. Went there as a group of 13 for a 6.30 pm dinner, we had booked. I arrived with 2 others at 6.25 pm and were seated. At 6.30 we were asked when the rest of our group were arriving as they needed our table and there were people waiting.

Over the next 5 minutes, 5 more of our group had arrived (8 out of 13), and we were asked multiple times during this period when the rest were arriving, again because they wanted our table. We were told that our group had 10 minutes to get there, or they would take our table. At one stage (before our 10 minutes was up), one of the waitresses wanted to take two of the seats and part of the table. By 6.40 pm (we were up to 10 out of 13) we had been asked at least 15 times when the rest of our group were arriving, and that they wanted to take our table.

By 6.45 pm everyone had arrived. Now they ignored us. Took ages to flag down someone to take our order. The food arrived sporadically (some people had finished, while other people's food still hadn't arrived). One waitress even dropped some sauce onto one of our group. And after asking, we got bottles of water, but only enough cups for half of us. Oh, and there were only 2 waitresses staffed on, which was clearly insufficient.

May 23, 2011