It is always fun to sit at the counter and watch your food being cooked. Covid restrictions at one point banned this in SA and even now there are capacity restrictions in force which must make running a teppanyaki restaurant a nightmare, so I have...a lot of sympathy for the proprietors. Unfortunately their responses have in some ways reduced their customers' experience.
It starts when you book, as a $50 deposit per person is taken from your card immediately. Apparently you can get this refunded if you cancel more than 72 hours in advance.
On the evening we arrived to find the entrance bolted and an instruction to ring the bell. A voice on the other end of the intercom asked our names and if we had a booking. We then had to wait until the voice made his way through the vestibule to the door and unlocked it. Once inside we had to scan the QR code in the vestibule and were then led to teppanyaki room and shown to our places at the counter. All very covidsafe but a bit daunting.
Once seated, the service was very attentive, although we found the special offer on the $199 Kobe Beef tasting menu a bit confusing. We quickly gave up trying to understand it and opted for the $99 pp. Samurai Feast with Australian Wagyu which was quite good enough for us.
The starter, consisting of sashimi, seared beef and tempura, was excellent. It was quickly followed by teppanyaki scallops and jumbo prawns, both very good. A salad was then served which we ate before the beef course, French style, but which according to the menu should have been served with the fried rice. The teppanyaki beef and vegetables were served with wasabi, salt, crispy garlic and two sauces. I found the sauce for the beef a bit sweet although adding salt corrected that. The fried rice was a bit bland but the house made ice cream was good.
Our evening was then deflated when we paid the bill on the way out. Vincent gave me a figure which sounded about right. As it was over $100 "tap and pay" was not applicable, so I inserted my debit card in the EFTPOS machine, selected "Savings" in order to reduce the transaction charge to the restaurant, and paid. Only then did I notice the "Credit Card 1.5% surcharge" of $2.06 already on the bill. When I complained and pointed out that I had paid with eftpos through my savings account, Vincent said that Bendigo Bank charged them 1.5% on all cards including Debit cards and eftpos transactions. If true, which I doubt as Bendigo Bank's "business fees and charges" document lists savings and cheque eftpos transactions as costing 25¢, they ought to switch to Westpac who have a 1.2% "blended rate". If they are not using a blended rate offer like this it is illegal to charge more than the 25¢ actual rate for an eftpos savings bank transaction.More
