Kiyo Japanese Restaurant - Pyrmont

Great food and lovely people made it a great evening for the guys abandoned by their book group wives. Nicely presented meals and charming service to boot. Going back tonight!

As much as I wanted to love this place I have to with a heavy heart say my experience here was underwhelming. Came here on probably one of their most busiest nights of the year, had a booking & was seated in front of the window. Although we were asked if we wanted to change seats we were happy to stay where we were. I should've picked up that this will be a disappointing night when it took them a while to give us the menu even though they had seated us. My partner had a feeling that it wasn't going to be good either. Service was pretty non-existent & you would only see staff when they were delivering food. We ordered 2 starters, 2 mains, 2 miso soups (to have during the entrees) a salad & rice. The sashimi salad was the first thing that came to the table, we were hoping to have this with our mains but as we were hungry we just went along with it. Salad was nice however the sashimi was not cold and felt more like room temperature. The salad dressing although nice, coated everything too much. For the starters we ordered the scallop special (pan fried with a butter sauce - this dish was unfortunately way over seasoned with salt, if they calmed down with the salt it would've been more enjoyable. We did squeeze alot of lemon on it to get rid of some of the salt. Our second starter was the salmon & avocado stack (forgot what it was called). The other reviewer that was raving on about this dish must've had it on a good day as ours was just rather bland & boring. They gave us small rectangles of seaweed paper to put some of the ingredients in and eat it. Not sure what that really accomplished flavour wise. Our miso soups finally came during the time of the entrees which was good, we requested to have the miso soup with spoons but the girl soon forgot our request & it wasn't until she was delivering another dish to us that she remembered that we needed spoons. We had been waiting for quite some time & decided to ask if they haven't started making the mains to cancel them. Unfortunately they were already cooked & came to our table. We ordered one of the wagyu mains with a wine & onion sauce cooked medium - the way the beef was explained was totally different to how it came out. It looks more like a piece of normal store bought coles steak & not wagyu at all. It had a big fatty/gristly bit in the middle, it was thin and cooked well done. The sauce still had an over powering flavour of wine. Not worth paying $35 at all! We also ordered the white fish dish, it was kingfish. The appearance looked unappealing. Tried the fish, it was dry & had a weird flavour to it. It did not taste fresh. The sauce on top of it was almost jelly like and did not go with the fish at all, it was sweet & the texture was just so weird. Barely ate both these dishes & was not asked if the meals were ok. Overall, this is by far the worst meal I have had, paying $130 for food that was subpar & hardly japanese at all. The food was drowned in overpowering sauces (which most likely was to help mask the not so fresh produce). This is terrible considering the fish markets are down the road. I've had better Japanese & paid alot less. Would have been happy to spend that money if the food & service was good. Service was not attentive & staff would be nowhere to be seen & or would rush off so we couldn't flag them down. We had dishes that were ready to be taken away & saw staff look at them & walk straight past multiple times. Will not be back, better Japanese down the road.

As much as I wanted to love this place I have to with a heavy heart say my experience here was underwhelming. Came here on probably one of their most busiest nights of the year, had a booking & was seated in front of the window. Although we were asked if we wanted to change seats we were happy to stay where we were. I should've picked up that this will be a disappointing night when it took them a while to give us the menu even though they had seated us. My partner had a feeling that it wasn't going to be good either. Service was pretty non-existent & you would only see staff when they were delivering food. We ordered 2 starters, 2 mains, 2 miso soups (to have during the entrees) a salad & rice. The sashimi salad was the first thing that came to the table, we were hoping to have this with our mains but as we were hungry we just went along with it. Salad was nice however the sashimi was not cold and felt more like room temperature. The salad dressing although... read more

Not sure why the review for this place isn't above 4! Have been here twice now, once takeaway and once dine in. Both times impressed! 1) service was fantastic and genuine - very kind and nice staff and very polite 2) food was great - some dishes didn't strike me as typical Japanese food (not necessarily a bad thing!) but overall the taste was very good We had fried oysters - really really good Gyoza was quite standard Ox tongue thick cut, chewy and quite nice Dry noodles was very good, taste somewhat like a Chinese dish but tasty! Would definitely come back!

Our first time here and can't fault the food and service. The staff were attentive and food was really good. Would definitely head back again!!!