Monja Moheji Ueno — Restaurant in Tokyo

As a foreigner living in Japan, trying this sort of restaurant for the first time, was an overall not-so-good experience.

(TL;DR at the bottom)

I went there on Saturday at lunchtime with one more person. The queue was not long and we did not really mind waiting, but the first thing that came into my mind when I walked into the restaurant was "how dirty the restaurant is". The tables and seats were clean, but the surroundings were unbearable to look at. One good thing about the seat is that the seat is like a box, customers can safely store their belongings right in it safely.

After we ordered, during the wait, the staff came by and asked if we wanted the appetizer omelet. The staff did not mention anything about the price, but in the end, we were charged about 700+ yen for it, pretty much expensive for the amount. The taste was average.

Leaving out the appetizer omelet, we waited almost half an hour for my first monjayaki. The wait was awful and painful. We were already hungry, the restaurant was already hot and people were talking loud enough, the speaker was also right above our head playing loud music. I highly recommend people with hearing problems or tinnitus stay away from this restaurant.

After the first monjayaki came, the staff started preparing the meal for us. It seemed like a good thing, but it is their job, so this is not really a plus point. After clearing the monjayaki, the pan was empty, so it was time for the second food, our okonomiyaki, the staff also prepared that for us. The staff did give us extra instruction on how to eat monjayaki and how much longer is needed to flip the okonomiyaki. The taste of monjayaki was great, but the okonomiyaki was just average and somehow can get burnt quite quickly. I also wished for larger plates for us to put our food on.

Calling staff was difficult. We sat on the 2nd floor of the restaurant where staff only often come for a brief period and go, and there was no "call" button. As mentioned earlier, the restaurant was loud, so it was not easy to call the staff. Even when I raised my hand, most of the time the staff did not notice it. There were also no water jugs at the tables, and calling staff was required to refill cups of water.

After we finished our meal, we could not stand the atmosphere and gave up on ordering dessert. We paid for it and walked out. One of the very few good things was the staff spraying the clothes deodorant for us. That is all. We spent around 95-110 minutes for a lunch (the time arrived at the restaurant to the time we exited the restaurant), which I considered very time-consuming. I was not full, and burning-drying feelings were left in my mouth and tongue for like 24-48 hours. I will never visit this restaurant for the second time nor recommend this to anyone.

TL;DR

Pros: Able to store belonging easily, good monjayaki taste, clothes deodorant spray when exiting

Cons: Dirty restaurant surroundings, no omelet appetizer price mentioned when we are being offered, very loud atmosphere, long food waiting time, calling staff was difficult

Other mentions: Average okonomiyaki taste and burnt...

Its interesting experience! I have never eaten Monjayaki before. Its like a more liquid texture than okonomiyaki. Staffs can speak some english. They show me the english instruction that Each person has to order 1 course including The egg appetizer (which is like the little omelette. And limit the eating time is 2hr. ( one weird thing about this is that they kinda force you to order the egg appetizer as they said it will come with the course and they will charge for it even if you don’t want the egg appetizer) in my opinion, the egg appetizer is a little over prized like 400ish yen. I would give a full 5stars if they don’t force us to order egg appetizer. But Everything else is ok. Staffs will cook for you which is nice but that means it takes time as staffs have to cook for other people too. So we end up missing our train as it take long time( than we expected) for waiting for staff to cook each course for us. Overall its a fun/interesting way to eat! The restaurant is very small it has like 10tables for 2-4people/table. Its quite popular and They have another branch like a few mins walk from the original branch.

One more suggestion: I wish they have a choice that allow customers to be able to cook this for themselves (like for people who have eaten it before and already have learned how to cook it , then it would be more fun/interactive to cook it by yourself and so safe some time for both customers a...

Maybe its because of a language barrier thing but we feel kind of ripped off by this place. They advertised something that looked like okonomiyaki for 680 yen in front of the store and we thought hey great deal (this was lunch on a week day).

We were sat down and given an English menu even though one of us knows Japanese decently well. The English menu was not the full menu but rather a simplified version that only included sets (okonomiyaki + pork/seafood/beef tendon) that were obviously more expensive than what we thought was the base version for 680 yen. One of us is flexitarian (meaning he would rather have ordered the base version than order any of the meat toppings).

They kind of rushed us to choose from the English menu before we could compare with the Japanese menu we've seen outside and thus we took the beef and seafood.

Then they grilled us squid as an entree which we did not order and we were not asked about, we thought hey nice is this included for free?

Okonomiyaki was good, they make it right on your desk. In the end we ended up paying around 5000yen (for 2 people) for what was supposed to be a small-ish lunch, the food was good but they did charge us for the squid and the fact that we were rushed through and given the tourist treatment even though we could have ordered a better selection in Japanese if given more time kind of leaves...