Maneki Japanese Cuisine & Karaoke Box — Restaurant in Dublin

This is a two-part review, partly because the portion size to price ratio is very very unbalanced. I'm generally not a person to complain about meal size, but when you get 5 thin strips of breaded chicken for a katsu curry as a main, with the rest of the meal being rice with a carrot "curl" as garnish, you really wonder what you're paying 12+ euros for. The second part of this review is that my experience with this restaurant when ordering via deliveroo was pretty poor at various levels. Our order was 80 euros, including 2 hot mains and 5 cold sushi options. When the driver arrived he had a single bag of food, I asked if he had any other bag he told me no. So I complained to deliveroo, who quickly put a new order, stating to the restaurant that the previous items were missing, meaning it was up the restaurant to produce a new order of items as they failed the first time - at their own expense. However, the restaurant decided not to because they weren't going to be paid for the previous missing bag they claim had been given to the driver, which is fair, since if they did indeed give the bag to the driver - which i assume they may even have proof of - they wouldn't want to take responsibility for missing items and lose the money - this could be an easy battle between deliveroo and the restaurant - provide video proof that 2 bags were handed and let deliveroo sort it out with the driver if that was the case. However, what they did was "ignore" the second order from deliveroo, so we waited another 40 mins, when finally a driver arrives at restaurant, the order is marked as on the way for a brief moment and eventually a message from the rider is received saying "Restaurant did not have any items for me and saying they are cancelling the order" which they did shortly after.

Long story short, deliveroo owned up and paid the missing items + 15 euros compensation, but ultimately, the restaurant failed it's potential customer. As first time customer, I will not give my custom to this...

Really cute little restaurant with amazing vibes and very friendly staff, sadly thats where my positive experience ends. The menu is misleading and the food is subpar considering the prices. Me and girlfriend ordered the bento boxes, I got the beef teriyaki and my girlfriend ordered the tempura bento. Both were small portions considering it was about €15 each, I got 2 pieces of sushi a small amount of steak 2 gyoza and a portion of rice. The beef was chewy and tough despite being cooked med-rare, the sushi tasted ok but only 2 pieces when the menu made it sound like you get a roll with the bento. Neither of us enjoyed what they tried to pass off as miso soup as it more closely resembled a bowl of hot water with tofu. The mixed veg tempura was just as bad, the portion was a tiny bit better as there was a decent amount of tempura, however the tempura sauce was extremely disappointing, again more closely resembling water. Only half of the tempura was cooked through as well (broccoli was still raw yet the yams were falling apart). The tempura bento came with 2 pc of vegan nigiri, 2 vegan gyoza and a portion of plain rice. I think the only thing we liked was the gyoza. I didn’t expect my meal to be comped by any means as I was so hungry i finished half of it before the taste put me off halfway through (only experienced this once or twice), however my girlfriend had only taken 3 bites before deciding she didn’t like it and I was still charged full price. Since I was charged full price I feel like I should’ve been offered to take the food with me at least however the table was bussed immediately and the food disposed of. If I could’ve taken it togo I may have been able to feed a stray dog with it. On the menu it also said that an automatic 12.5% service charge would be added to all bills, which i think is a bit unfair and unethical especially considering the prices of their food I would hope they actually pay their staff and don’t expect the public to pick up...

There are many aspects to consider:

Food is great, but on the expensive side The place is great, but has many stairs, it can be problematic for some people Staff is great too, and it seems to have one assigned per section so there's always someone available for you

I booked the package of 2 hours dinner + 2 hours karaoke for my birthday party, my take is that THERE'S NO FLEXIBILITY for the booking

One thing I didn't like very much is that, when you book for an amount of people, you can change only up to 20% of the number of people. If it's 1.8 they will round to one person. So if you're inviting indicisive people who are not sure if they're going, don't book with this place.

You also pay a deposit for each guest, and you can't cancel, change the time of booking or else you won't get your deposit back

I think €55 per person for dinner + karaoke was a fair price, but there was a 12.5% charge for the whole bill, which made everything a lot more expensive

The bill was divided by guest and I think that was very practical

The karaoke room is great! We were on the top floor, so if you have a problem with stairs, be aware! That also meant that we needed at least 5 orders for our server to bring a drink to us. And the system is in Chinese.

The karaoke was fine, many songs, but the searching method was dreadful. It only works if you put the first letter of the song or artist (and is not interchangeable) and you have to scroll down till you find your song. For example, if your song is Take, you can only write "t", if you write "ta", there's a very low chance for your song to be in the results.

"Still Loving You" from Scorpions was a black screen for the whole song!

Overall, we had a lovely night. If it was a bit cheaper, I would do this many many more times!

PS: I forgot to take...