Sakura Karaoke Bar — Restaurant in Chicago

It's a cool atmosphere, but there is definitely room for improvement in multiple areas: Payment upon arrival: I booked in advance and paid a $50 deposit over the phone. Oddly, upon arrival, they took my card again and charged it, which was confusing and off-putting. Two more bills came at the end, for the remainder of the room charge and our food/drinks. I had to check my credit card bill later to make sure, and everything evened out, but the system of making a deposit in advance and then payment upon arrival and then upon departure is really overdone, unwelcoming and time consuming--distracting from the short window of time we had to get into the room and have a good time. Screen language setting: We received a quick "training session" when we got into the room. All songs need to be searched on a screen in the corner of the room, and there is apparently no way to set the system to English. Luckily (?) I know enough Japanese to figure out some Chinese characters, but when we typed in certain artists that would definitely be in the system - - like The Beatles for example - - we didn't get results. Instead, we had to scroll through the most popular artists category, and pick from whatever came up. The Beatles came up in that category, further confounding us as to how to actually search for what we wanted to sing. Slow service: We arrived a little after 6pm and there was no one else there but the staff. Still, they didnt' take our drink or food order until a few minutes later (inturruping the karaoke at that point) and then brought one drink--a mixed drink--at which point they told us the red wine wasn't available. By the time we got the wine, we were almost through the first hour in our room. The food was equally slow, for a few dishes in what I assume was an otherwise slow kitchen. Again, we were the only ones there at the time. Automatic 20% gratuity combined with slow service: I don't usually mind gratuity being added automatically because I tip well to begin with, but it didn't help with the other issues above. So I don't think we'll be back. This place could have been great, but it just completely missed the mark. I am trying to be fair and not compare it to karaoke in Japan, where I lived for over a decade, but I know how smooth the service COULD be given some changes, and Sakura has a...

Saturday night and had a good time with friends because we made the best of it. And bouncer was friendly. (Scroll down if you want review only on karaoke)

But

Private room and bathroom dirty.

Drinks: The mixed drinks were not good. The bartender said she can make me a basic lime margarita but then asked me what goes into it (its your job to know) so i just got their Hennessey tea instead but you can really taste the liquor. needed honey or sugar.

Service: They also tried to rush us out of our $40/hour private room (stopped in our room at the half hour, 15, 10 , and 5 minute markers before our time was over to remind us that we leave at 1). They never checked to see how things were going. And being in chinatown, their service wasnt great for our non-asian looking group.

Automatically charged 18% gratuity for them to pick up empty cups. They didn't bring us drinks or offered any assistance or to take any order if we wanted food.

Karaoke selection/system: cool with the touch screen but it froze on us and wasted 5-10 minutes of our room time, which we didnt get back and wasnt given something for (they also knew that song messes up the system: so why do you still have it?). song selection is not organized well and is missing karoke classics. Qlso no "top choices" or "todays hits" or even a genre selection. Decent artists but the songs for them were unpopular songs. Lots of duplicate songs. Lame music videos that looked like it was made in the early 90s if it wasnt the official video. ( we had a video play of a woman walking along the beach for Usher -" yeah"). both mics in the room ran out of battery quickly and had a lot...

I rented a small private karaoke room for my birthday on open table. When we went in for our reservation it was a complete disaster. Kimberly, who was assisting us, said we had reserved a table instead of a room. I explained through the process of reserving online, i selected private small room and paid the $50 deposit. She said no, we reserved the table, but she would get back to me and started helping another group (who coincidentally had the same problem). When i went up to her to follow up, (10 minutes later) she had forgotten completely who i was and what the problem was. She was very clearly intoxicated, and i wasn’t the only one who thought so. There was a trainee, it was her first day, and the trainee was very helpful and understanding of the situation. At one point, Kimberly started blaming her and saying sorry it was her first day, but i assured Kimberly that the trainee had done nothing wrong. I was very thankful the trainee was there and trying to help. After another distraction, Kimberly came back and said yes we reserved a room and i had a balance of $128 for the reservation, i thought everything got figured out so i paid. Immediately after submitting payment, Kimberly said “Oh wait, they don’t have a room they only reserved a table”. Then we stayed for another 20 minutes trying to figure out how I can get refunded for everything because i just wanted to leave at that point. Kimberly was very unprofessional and i don’t normally leave reviews, but i felt it was necessary for this situation, especially since we weren’t the only party involved...