Shakey's Ikebukuro East — Restaurant in Tokyo

14 years ago, honeymoon with my wife in Tokyo, we came here twice.

March 2024, came back to Japan with our 2 kids, we also came here twice. It may sound weird to visit Japan and eat AYCE Pizza. But after eating the same stuff every day like Sushi, Ramen, Katsu, BBQ, over and over and over, I can't believe I'd saying, "eating pizza" is a bit of a relief.

Pros: Pizza is actually tasty. Thin crunchy crust Has healthy options such as edamame, salads, etc AYCE fountain drinks Conveniently located if there is a long wait. Grab your ticket and shop around, and use mobile to see your place in the queue. Lots of variety of pizza, including dessert pizza.

Cons: Not easy if you don't read Japanese. For example, you need to get a ticket, and the whole process is in Japanese, so we needed help and staff is not always available at the machine. You'd think you can use google-translate like you do everywhere, but that ticket machine is at the bottom of a "tunnel" where there is no reception. GOTCHA! Line up is ALWAYS long at this place. After the first experience, I learned to shop around while waiting, and check queue status on the phone. However, it's not obvious you can do that if you can't read Japanese. One of my kid only eat pepperoni, but it's not always available. For a good half hour, there were none. We learned later that you can request, but again it's not obvious to foreigners.

Would be a much better experience if it were an English-friendly place. However, it's still not bad overall, we gotta respect...

Before you read this, please understand that this review is based on my past experiences when I used to live in Tokyo about 33 years ago. That's my yard stick. I don't know anyone living here from back then but it seems like the overall food quality and type has changed and become the norm. We used to come to Shakey's once a month as a family growing up for years. Back in those days, they had a lot of branches in the city but sometime in the 90s, they kept closing them and now I believe there are only 3 to 5 locations in the entire city. The pizza to me was the worse. It was not the thin crust like it used to be back in the day. There was a lot of edges that had no sauce/topping on it so the edges were really poofed up. The bite did not have the crispiness to it like it used to. It didn't even feel as light as before. The last time I had Shakey's in Tokyo was probably in 1991 so that's 32 years ago and it has changed A LOT and not to my liking. The potatoes were not bad. They used to be better but something's off about them. The spaghetti with bacon was probably the same as it used to be so I did get my dose of nostalgia there. All in all, I think I'm done and...

They were under renewal (remodelling) for the last couple of weeks. Ended up visiting them the day they reopened. Several guys in suits running around looking official, and one person taking pictures.

It has some nice wood accenting inside now, which definitely helped the look of the place. They were doing a good job of keeping the pizzas and the salad bar stocked. Hopefully things stay that way.

I never really had a problem with their food, but hadn't been there in the previous couple of years, so don't know how it was recently.

They have two small Coke Freestyle machines (the kind with 8 or 9 flavors), one of which had Coke Zero... which I don't see often enough in restaurants, so that was a point in their favor.

I plan to...