MR. MAURICE’S ITALIAN Restaurant & Rooftop Bar — Restaurant in Kyoto

Disappointing Experience!!!

My husband and I have been in Japan now for 13 days and this is the first time I have had a negative thought about any food (or lack thereof) or establishment since we arrived. This is our third trip to Japan in the last 8 years and so we are familiar with the consistently high quality food and service, whether you pay 1,000JPY or 10,000JPY for a meal.

We made a booking online (that was easy). We found the hotel and eventually found the restaurant (not easy), but that was fine. The manager greeted us and took us to our table out on the terrace. It was a cold night (6 deg celcius) but we chose to stay on the terrace and we were fine with our warm clothing and the heater near us, as well electric blankets we were given (that didn't work), but still kept us reasonably warm.

The manager gave us the dinner and specials menus and drinks menu and left.

There were 2 other tables of 3 people on the terrace. One group had clearly eaten, the other group had not.

Another couple turned up about 15 minutes after us and then 20 minutes later, another couple turned up. In total, there were only 12 people on the terrace.

A bartender appeared 5 minutes after we were seated and took our drinks order and was back within 5 minutes with our drinks.

On a couple of occasions, I tried to make eye contact with the bartender when he came outside, but he wasn't near us. There was a chef (I assume from the chef's hat he was wearing), in behind the bar wandering around looking bored, but he didn't come out onto the terrace at all.

I can understand that given how cold it was, the staff may not want to be out on the terrace and so perhaps, on cold nights, that area needs to be closed if that is the reason for what followed.......

After 45 minutes of waiting patiently for someone to come and take our food order, my husband and I made a decision to leave without dinner and find somewhere else to eat. We ended up at Pizza Salvatore Cuomo & Grill (which was fabulous BTW).

What was particularly annoying was that we could see people inside, who had arrived after us but had received their food by the time we walked past them to leave.

There is honestly very little ambience out on that terrace and a strange playlist that covered all kinds of music genres that were not conducive to a relaxing night out. We were surprised when we arrived, to find that the rooftop terrace sits low in the building and doesn't have a view of anything as it is part of the Ace Hotel, which sits higher than the "rooftop" terrace. Never have I been to a rooftop bar that sits lower than the roof of the building in which it is housed.

I had a Limoncello and soda water and my husband had a beer and including a service fee, these 2 drinks cost 2,400JPY. When we paid our bill with the manager who had seated us, he didn't ask why we were leaving without dinner and didn't ask if everything had been ok.

There a hundreds of better options for a night out in Kyoto.

This is sadly, in my opinion, a case of a restaurant being in a hotel and having a captive market and not needing to try too...

The service we received deserves 0 stars which took away from the nice venue and food. There were at least 3 other tables that were visibly disgruntled by the service.

We first off arrived at 6:15pm without a reservation, and were told that we were only allowed to stay till 7:30 p.m which was fine. After ordering around 6:30, our drinks and entree arrived at 6:40pm. We then proceeded to wait 1 hour before needing to ask a waiter where our pizza was. This came 10 minutes later to then be followed by a waiter 5 mins after bringing us the bill while we were halfway through our pizza! She was asking to promptly pay as we were past our reservation time of 7:30pm (it was 7:50pm at this point) and they have an 8pm reservation for our table (there was numerous outdoor tables available which was even more confusing). After advising that we only just got our food and this was out of our control, her solution was we could move to another table. The venue manager was equally not accommodating after explaining this to him, he was simply apologetic. I had to then rush my pizza in the 1 minute we had left so we could pay and leave.

NOT THE TYPE OF SERVICE YOU WOULD EXPECT WHEN PAYING THAT KIND OF MONEY which is very disappointing given the food and cocktails were nice.

Sadly, could...

We arrived to a basically empty restaurant and asked if we could get a seat inside. After they deliberated and spoke on their radio for a while, we were seated inside. We ordered some meatballs and pizza. We got two meatballs for $28 which is overpriced in anybody's language. They were served with a embarrassingly tiny amount of polenta. The meatballs were just ok. I ordered a half half pizza. Half Kyoto vegetables, half pepperoni pizza. The pizza was so dry. The crust was dry, the meat was overcooked until it was dry, there was no moisture with the vegetables. It was actually unpleasant to eat. Waste of $30! Would not recommend. Most of the staff were lovely and bubbly and was the only redeeming feature. Except for the guy that seated us and could do with some cheering up. Overall, overpriced and really not great. You could pretty much eat at monk which is actually amazing for a similar price. We realised today that they also put a ~Y1000 "service charge" on our bill, which we weren't aware was being charged. I know these are common in japan - but this isn't your little mom and pop store - this is a big business. I wonder how much of that "service" charge goes as a tip to the people actually providing the "service"' and how much goes...