Stephen K.
Yelp
My wife and I are currently in Australia celebrating our Honeymoon. Our trip started with two weeks in Tokyo (our favorite place to visit), during which time we ate unforgettable omakase sushi meals at Sukiyabashi Jiro, Sushi Mizutani, Sushi Yoshitake, Sushi Tokami and Sushi Kanesaka. After leaving Tokyo, we have been traveling thoughout Australia. In Sydney, we had the pleasure of incredible meals at Sepia and Quay, among many other great restaurants, and while in Melbourne, we have had the pleasure of eating at Attica, Brae, Cutler and Co., and several other fantastic spots.
Tonight was our last night in Melbourne, and it was also our first sushi meal since leaving Tokyo. We had reservations at the much-heralded Minamishima, which is supposed to be the best sushi restaurant in all of Australia, and which, two weeks ago, was just upgraded from two hats to three hats in the "Good Food Guide," which seems to be the Australian equivalent of the Michelin Guide.
We booked two seats at the sushi counter well in advance, on the day that reservations became available, and had been looking forward to this meal with rapt anticipation ever since. When we arrived tonight, however, we found ourselves seated at the very far end of the sushi counter - in a veritable "No Man's Land," with only two sinks in front of us, needing binoculars to see any of the action going on down at the other end of the sushi bar, where the chefs were actually doing their work. Note that we were were seated there despite the fact that, when we arrived at 8:00pm, more than half of the sushi bar was empty, and despite the fact that several of the seats directly in front of the main chef ended up remaining unoccupied through until we left near the end of the night.
I am going to gloss over the actual food experience here, because that is not what this review is about. In a few sentences, I will say that it was very good, despite my irritation at having booked a sushi counter seat only to find myself further from the sushi counter and the sushi chefs than many of the restaurant's non-sushi counter tables were. None of the pieces of standard Edomae sushi could compare to what you can find in Tokyo, or even in New York (where we are from), but many of the pieces that were Australian in provenance were very interesting and very good. The sake pairing was also very good, and included some very interesting, off-the-beaten path sakes.
When the time came to pay the check, a gentlemen in a suit came over with our bill (I presume he was the manager), and I told him that, for future reference, when someone books seats at the sushi counter and the restaurant intend to put tshem down in the "No Man's Land" where we were seated at the end of the counter, the restaurant should let them know in advance where it plans to seat them, because if we had known that we would be seated where we ended up being seated, we would have cancelled our reservation and eaten somewhere else. We also told him that the experience that we had at the restaurant was very far from the experience that one expects when one books two seats at the sushi counter at what is supposedly a high-end sushi-ya.
Instead of apologizing for the fact that we had a subpar experience at his restaurant, the manager, or whoever he was, became *INCREDIBLY* defensive and aggressive, telling us, among other things, that "The good seats at the sushi counter are only for regulars." I told him that that was fine, but that that fact should be communicated to non-regulars - like us, for example, who were coming from halfway around the world to celebrate our honeymoon at his restaurant - so that they could make an informed decision as to whether they wanted to pay over five hundred Australian dollars to be treated like second-class citizens, tucked away almost as if they were in a broom closet. I also noted that several of his beloved "regulars" had no-showed, leaving prime seats in front of the sushi chef empty for the entirety of the night while we froze to death from the draft through the front door over in our No Man's Land at the far end of the ridiculously long sushi counter. The manager - who I gather simply could not have been Japanese or had any previous experience in a Japanese restaurant, given his reaction to my constructive criticism, which would be unthinkable in any of the Japanese restaurants we have ever been to, where service and hospitality are treated with the utmost importance - then became even more defensive and even more rude and aggressive, hustling us out of the restaurant in an absolutely shameful, disrespectful and disgusting way that I have never experienced in all my years of fine dining all around the world. It was, frankly, shocking and appalling, and he should be ashamed of himself - someone like him has no business being within a thousand meters of what is supposed to be one of the best restaur
