Manzoku Izakaya — Restaurant in Seattle

There are two main components that I value at a restaurant: value and quality. Unfortunately, this place has neither. I write this review as a chance to warn others that may be deceived into coming here (like we were) by many of the other positive reviews and to make it clear that if you still decide to come here after this review, the blame rests on you.

Let me start with why we made the poor decision to come here so you can see if you are in the same boat, and if so, reconsider. We saw that it is rated fairly highly on Google Maps and the prices looked reasonable. Recent reviews were largely positive and they also appeared to have some high-end offerings like A5 Wagyu (most of the restaurants I’ve been to that serve A5 have been good).

Given this, we decided to go here and sit down. That was our first mistake. Our second mistake was ordering everything at once. We assumed that the food would be decent and ordered enough skewers for the meal. Ordering one by one would have spared us a lot of pain since we could have stopped after the first skewer.

Let me now talk about what was wrong with the food:

Most skewers were under-seasoned, meaning we needed to add extra sauce, which costs extra—even salt costs extra! This would be totally fine if things were seasoned properly but they were not… Many of the skewers were straight-up burnt. It looked like the skewers were forgotten on the grill and accidentally burnt to a crisp. I get that this happens occasionally, but then you should not serve it. I am not sure how someone first saw the burnt skewers and thought it was okay to serve or that we would not notice. The chicken was clearly very very overcooked and extremely dry. It reminds me of freeze-dried chicken when I add too little water. This should not be acceptable at a relatively high-end restaurant. The beef cubes had a terrible texture—honestly not sure how to describe it or how they managed to produce such a travesty. Now, imagine the combination of the above points. The chicken skewers were not only dry, but also under-seasoned AND burnt. The beef skewers were clearly burnt in addition to the terrible texture. One of these would have been enough to make it bad, but the combination rendered them truly inedible.

When we pointed this out to the waiter, he apologized and hesitated (I think he was probably going to say the chef was new and decided against it) before saying that it must have been because the restaurant was busy. Interestingly, more than half of the tables were empty. Maybe it really was a lot more busy than usual since I would be surprised if they had ANY returning customers with the quality of the food today.

It is worth pointing out that the waiter offered us a free dessert but we didn’t bother with it given the quality of everything else.

If this place had been cheaper, say $30 per person, then it would still have been $30 too much. Unfortunately, it came out to over $50 per person before tip. I would avoid this place if you care about your wallet or taste buds.

TL;DR: Don’t come here if you want decent food. I am willing to bet that you will have a terrible time...

Do It Properly, or Don’t Do It at All

Terribly Disappointed. I went in expecting the same quality—or better—than Shinya Shokudo, which used to be one of my favorite spots downtown. Instead, this was one of the most disappointing dining experiences I’ve had in Seattle.

As soon as I walked in, I noticed a claw machine with Labubu as a prize. Cute idea, until I asked if it was real. The server checked with the owner and confirmed it was fake. That’s misleading and feels like fraud—offering counterfeit prizes to lure reviews is not acceptable.

The food was bad across the board. The bento (6 tasting dishes) tasted like it had been sitting out all day. Scallops, salmon, and seaweed were unpleasantly fishy. The zaru soba was even worse: undercooked, served warm, and clearly not chilled in ice water the way it should be. To make matters worse, it came out late—after we asked where it was—despite the restaurant being nearly empty (just one other table on a Thursday at 6pm). There’s no excuse for that.

Even the basics were handled poorly: • The sauce in the sriracha bottle was gunky and unusable. If you’re going to serve house-made sauce, keep it usable or don’t put it out. • Only one napkin was given, which I had to waste cleaning the bottle cap—and the sauce was still unusable. • The tables are tiny, portions small, and the prices way too high for the quality—even for downtown Seattle.

Bottom line: overpriced, poor quality food, misleading promotions, and sloppy execution. Seattle has too many good Japanese spots to waste your time and money here.

Note to the Owner(s): If you are reading this, please reach out after these issues are fixed. I’d be more than happy to update my review—I would love to see this restaurant become a favorite again. Putting effort into real improvements will go much further than paying Google/Yelp to bury honest feedback.

I have added picture of owner’s response below and here’s my take :

Labubu - people normally don’t put fake labubu because it’s “cute” it’s obviously meant to deceive customers (In my opinion! 😒)

‼️ Food and value - larger and cheaper doesn’t make it better. Quality dropped significantly, making it not worth after all.

Tables - I think all the tables are half size the normal tables at other stores, VERY minor complaint

Napkins - I agree, I only mention it to emphasize on customer having to wipe the sauce bottle only to not be able to use

Sauces - I guess it’s customer’s duty to check and maintain the sauce! Must be a new thing.

Also worth noting: I had this restaurant as 4star for shinya shokudo previously 😉 I’m not a review terroriest, as you can see from my 60+ other reviews. It’s true that when I write long reviews, it’s often for critic rather than praise, but they are 100%...

I saw all the great reviews and seeing that I love yakitori I decided to snag a reservation. I was so utterly disappointed. It started off on a bad note with them being out of Sapporo, the only Japanese beer they had on tap. The server recommended I substitute an IPA, which shows a lack of judgment.

Well ok, it is a soft opening we can move past being out of a beer. We came specifically to have yakitori and they have an omakase which really drove us here. Well we are informed that the kitchen is not prepared to serve an omakase. This was immediately frustrating, that the restaurant wasn't able to showcase their best offering. How can a restaurant serve good food if they can't showcase their best?

We also went for the appetizer sampling box which is similarly suppose to be a chefs sampling of appetizers. This was a cheat at best, the box had potato salad, 3 pickled cucumber slices, lightly pickled carrot slices, 3 slices of tamagoyaki, lotus chips, and a single fried corn ball. First, just the over all amount of food is not meant for sharing. Two people get essentially a bite each and with the corn ball you each have to take a bite of the same ball which unless you're a couple would likely not work very well. The carrots felt like an insult since it was such a small amount and such a basic quality that it was like trying to pass off a garnish as an appetizer. The rest of the items tasted fine, but felt like the cheapest items they could get away with while calling it a "sampling." Sure its a sampling, but likely not their best.

Since we couldn't get the omakase we picked just a few skewers of "chef recommended" items. This included wagyu, aged New York, and chicken thigh skewer. Every piece was a disappointment. The two steak items were overcooked and surprisingly flavorless, yet didn't have a decent char on them. The chicken thigh was probably the most flavorful and best cooked, but the sauce was like a light trickle of flavor added right at the end instead of something it was marinated in or applied in layers. Ultimately, we felt lucky not to have been locked into the omakase if everything was going to be such a poor quality.

It is very unfortunate it was such a poor experience because the concept is terrific and not common in Seattle, with a decent location in Belltown. But I can't see myself returning when there are so many other great...