Mansaku — Restaurant in Hakuba

This place is perplexing. Located inside the Mominoki Hotel, walking into the restaurant you're greeted by a procession of over fifteen wait staff. No, I'm not exaggerating.

After saying hello over a dozen times, we made it to our seats.

At least I had somewhere to hang my coat. A coat rack in the middle of the restaurant, on display to the 6 other diners.

You might think, with that much staff we at least would have table water or a water refill service. You were wrong.

Think pub style with stacked cups and two water & ice filled dispensers side by side on the opposite end of the restaurant.

The journey of the Menu:

Then I was baffled by the menu. 80,000 JPY for 1 set of Sukiyaki or Shabu Shabu. It doesn't state that it feeds two, but luckily looking at old reviews with the old menu, we figured it out.

Your choices are 180 g of Beef or Fish Or 300g of Pork or Chicken.

A bit expensive, especially considering other places are offering A5 Kobe beef for similar pricing. However this is where the menu takes a turn for the worse. Sushi: 3 pieces of any of their sushi, 18,000 JPY. That included prawn sushi. Your standard, 100 yen from your local Lawson's/7eleven single piece of sushi for 600 yen.

You want dessert? Oh great, an apple pie on its own, about the size and width of your thumb, 800 yen. 1 scoop of vanilla icecream? 700 yen. Yes, 1 scoop.

After we traversed the menu, all having acquired headaches, now to order.

Surely, with over a dozen waiters almost out numbering the customers, that wouldn't be hard, right? Right?

We look up to see 10, I counted them, loitering around a single table. Out numbering the customers over 3:1, like vultures they circled this table each looking for their opportunity to perform a task.

But that's fine, surely we could get just one to take our order.

Well, it took the combined efforts of four of us making eye contact, with one of us waving like they've seen an old friend, to pry the attention of 1.

We order, food comes out (hooray). To heat the food, a precarious camping boiler is placed on the table.

The Sukiyaki comes in the traditional cast iron pot, the Shabu Shabu in the inconvenient cake tin.

We enjoy our food in the far too hot ambiance of the restaurant. However, they came up with a solution. I was luckily sitting right next to the window, which they opened.

I got to enjoy a mixture of 27C degree heating and -5C degree cooling. The reason it's not 1* is because the food tasted fine.

However to spend 18,900 JPY amongst four and still be left hungry... The charade of luxury won't pull the wool over our eyes when you're charging 700 yen for a plain, non home made scoop of vanilla icecream.

Here's a tip, reduce the number of wait staff and reduce the cost of the food.

You don't need 15+ waiters, especially considering we're cooking our own food and getting...

Located inside Mominoki Hotel (we had trouble finding at first).

The staff was superfriendly and attentive!

For 2 pax, with drinks, we only paid ¥9,600; which is very reasonable for a hotel restaurant.

At first we thought we would need to order more beef, but after our udon, we were super full.

After our meal, the staff said Mominoki hotel could drive us back to our hotel, which was near the Happo-one.

We tried to go back the next day (without a reservation) but they were...

Overpriced shabu shabu, was very little portion with the high price and stated broth for the soup (which it should be) but it look and taste exactly like clear water, double checked with the front of house and they told it’s the broth And no drinking water provided until we have to request for it, and not too much people when we are there but still the service has no system we got the meat platter served for a great 15mins while soup pot is no...