Festa Wine & Cocktail Lounge - Karaoke — Restaurant in San Francisco

Passing by this establishment numerous times and have never realized that this is actually a karaoke place. We came here the other day and for the most part enjoyed ourselves. The drinks were nothing special.

It was fun and wild in there, the space is actually quite small and intimate. The problem I have with this place is that it uses a karaoke machine. Pay 2 dollars per song, okay fair. Unfortunately it tells you nothing about how large the song queue is. Apparently there were 40+ songs still in the queue before ours, because we sat there for almost 2 hours and our song never came up.

Also a really infuriating experience occurred - when one friend in our group left to use the bathroom, and a girl from another table tried to fight for his chair, claiming that our friend stole her chair. We nicely told her the chair was part of our table the whole time, and she finally backed off and drunkenly went back to standing near her group.

I also observed a woman straddling her boyfriend while making out. I suppose people come to Festa extremely drunk, but I didn't need to see that.

I can see myself coming back and probably enjoying it, but this place feels like a...

Mogura (another very similar bar/karaoke place in Japantown) was full so we ended up here... I was just here in early June 2021 and thought I'd write a review let people know what this place is like now. Stumbled upon Festa as we finished our matcha ice cream from the first floor (so good). We initially walked by and heard singing but there was a sign that said "reservations only". My friend, being the deviant she is, said,"Let's just go and see if we can sing anyway." So we went in. They met us at the door and we told them we didn't have a reservation, but she said 8/10 people had showed up from another group, so she could let us in. She also made us show us that we were vaccinated and took our temps. They have a huge song library that you can access from the Healsonic app or the book that they have. High quality karaoke songs. You give them a slip of paper and they enter it into a queue. It's $2 per song and they try to mix it up between the other groups. They have a full bar and charge SF prices. Overall a great time and I can't believe I haven't been before. Will go...

There was a server who told us that we had to buy a drink to come in. We’re Muslim. We just wanted to do karaoke. We didn’t get his name, but he was an East Asian male server with longer hair tied back. We told him we couldn’t drink and he told us to leave if we didn’t buy one. I’ve been in karaoke bars before and they have always respected my religious obligations. We said we would just buy some of their bar food instead, and he told us that we HAD to buy a drink if we were to stay. I didn’t know that people like us weren’t allowed in this place, but I guess that’s the way it is for this lounge. I’ve never had this sort of experience before. Honestly, I’ve never felt this level of discomfort and anxiety. I didn’t know what to say so we just left. I’ve been to Bay Area before and they’ve always been quite accepting, but I didn’t know I’d face the same thing I face everywhere...