Oriental Lounge — Restaurant in Tokyo

We've been for afternoon tea several times, but only once during the past 2 years because of the pandemic. We were excited to have tea here as our past experiences had been so nice, also our friends were staying in the hotel and it was a great opportunity to share with them. Unfortunately, this time the experience was lacking.

1. The dress code on the website says casual. It's hot in Tokyo at 34C(93F) so we wore dress shirts and shorts. Immediately we were told to cover up and given blankets (BLANKET'S!) to wrap around us. There were women in skirts showing just as much leg, so this seemed silly and sexist.

2. No Earl Grey. A pretty standard option was missing and I was really looking forward to it as they have (had) a wonderful blend. The menu in general seemed more sparse than I remember.

3. The small flower arrangement on the table was PLASTIC. It would be better to have nothing if fake is the only option. It really clashed with the beautiful porcelain cups.

4. In the past the scones were unlimited. Now you are limited to 2 small macaroon-sized scones. It felt a bit cheap of them.

It all blended together to really dull our experience, which is a shame. I understand that there's less traffic than before due to the pandemic and that cost-cutting is a necessity, so I hope things pick up for them and they can get back to the quality we enjoyed before. Best of luck!

Edit: Appears my review doesn't warrant a response from management. Very disappointing. Shows the general lack of training or care. LOTS of better places for afternoon tea in Tokyo....

Ok this is an absolute DISAPPOINTMENT for this LUXURY INTERNATIONAL CHAIN and its price.

The food is really not that good. Nothing really tasty. In the savory plate, one of the eels hadn’t been deboned at all. The only nice thing is they’d let you try all the drinks although only a couple of them were really good and the others very bland.

But that’s not the reason why 2 stars because we all understand that a luxury afternoon tea at such a 5 or 6 star hotel is just all about the atmosphere and service. But this is where we’re disappointed: the servers can’t speak simple English?! They were not attentive at all probably because they couldn’t speak English so they tried to avoid us. We understand that here’s Tokyo so we know we can’t expect fluent English everywhere. But this is MANDARIN ORIENTAL! An international luxury chain and the servers here have to use google translate?! We wouldn’t blame the servers but the lack of training by the management. Service was really disappointing and this was what our money supposed to pay for! Outrageous!

Also ignore their dress code. We dressed appropriately as required but all other guests didn’t follow and they didn’t enforce it!! Their management is a failure.

[FURTHER NOTE:] We just had a buffet at Grand Hyatt Tokyo, and now with comparison, Mandarin Oriental service was really unacceptable. Grand Hyatt had way better, attentive services. Their staff were so polite and always ready to serve. Not to mention their English were real English not Google...

The incompetence of the management at this hotel, amazes me on the down side. I don’t typically complain, but this needs to be seen. I have stayed at MOs all over the world (Hong Kong, Bangkok, San Francisco, New York, London). Tokyo has the worst training off all of them. We were in a rush, to get out in 45 minutes for a business meeting. The waitress got our order 80% wrong. We needed to leave for our appointment, they couldn’t even get together the 20% of the food they got right to take it with us. I hope the manger of this hotel see this - your Mandarin Oriental is a DISGRACE to all the rest of the Mandarin Orientals in the world. What are you...