5 stars simply because our server was so nice. I don't remember his name but he's the guy with the dreadlocks and has kind of a surfer guy voice. Probably my favorite server that I've had in Philly, dude was so friendly
Good service, nice food. Yakitori is no worse than what I have had in Japan
Came here for a friends birthday dinner on a Saturday night the downstairs restaurant was great we had dinner n it was really affordable bill came up to 300 for 7 people. We then went upstairs to the karaoke bar....it was sooo packed we only had standing room upon exiting the elevator and it was over an hour wait to request a song at the bar .... Feeling so costrofobic we attempted to sit down at 1 of all the empty booths we were quickly informed that we were not allowed to sit unless we were spending a minimum $50 per hr per table..... we then decided to rent a private karaoke room for $50 an hour for the 7 of us which was very reasonable an much more comfortable. The Karaoke song selection was mediocre but we enjoyed ourselves with a round of shots....At the end of the night we promptly paid the bill an was notified by our server that he had accidentally changed our card for another room an then attempted to avoid that transaction an charge the card for our room upon doing so he cause the bank to recognize the card as fraud and the card declined. He then returned to the room an explained his mistake. He then requested that we present him with another card so that we did not have to involve his manager for his mistake....Attempting to b understanding we presented him with another card an informed him we would not be tipping for the inconvenience of the declined card which would not be able to be disputed until Monday... the server kindly obliged ut when he returned with the bill he had added gratuity....we then went to the manager to explain the situation and the server also agreed about his mistake we only wanted to pay the total bill without the gratuity due to the servers mistake....The manager then proceeded to tell us that we had to pay the bill an was completely RUDE an disrespectful and due to the discrepancy ended up ruining my friends entire night due to the argument. Never Again worst birthday night ever he needs a serious lesson in customer service!!!!!!!!!!
Good selection. Wait staff seems to be spread thin of the resturant is busy.
So I come here at least once every time I come back to Philly when I'm away. It has two floors: the first level is its restaurant and the second is its lounge + karaoke rooms. Both levels have a bar. It's a great place to hang out with friends for a dinner or for a night to have fun at the lounge.
Entertainment
This is the reason for me giving it the 4/5 rating. This is one of the only few places in center city Philly that provides groups of parties their own private karaoke rooms. The prices are very affordable, especially if a group uses the free room promotion (buy enough drinks/food that cover double the hourly fee; use to be just the same amount, but not anymore). If you don't want to book a private room, the lounge is always fun. There is always people out singing their hearts out, which makes it super fun and hilarious. The con to entertainment, though, is that now it gets so packed that you have to book a table or room during the weekends, or you won't be able to get up there. Bar selection is decent; they have many drinks and house drinks as well. Definitely try the Tokyo Tea; a few of these can get you pretty tipsy.
Food
The food is pretty good. The prices vary from inexpensive to expensive depending on what you want to order. The daily specials they have are somewhat cheap, but selections are very limited. I usually come on Sushi or Skewer nights, because they are mad cheap. I love the quail egg, chicken, chicken and scallion, and the pork sausage skewers. As for taste, it's not the best I've eaten around in terms of Japanese food, but the selection is huge. You can also order food from both levels.
Service
Hosting is great and.. controlling? If you would like to go upstairs, they are really thorough with you in restaurant procedures and policies. Definitely great at the lower level restaurant. They come just enough so they don't really bother you, but are still attentive of you. As for upstairs, it tends to be confusing. If you're at the lounge and want food, you sometimes have no idea who your server is and you just have to approach staff. Sometimes, they're no where to be found and you might just have to approach a bouncer or the person controlling the lounge karaoke. Bar staff is sometimes short, and you really have to push through to grab drinks. Having your own room is good, since there is a call button. If it gets busy though, they might take forever to come. Different servers take care of you too, so be sure not to order the same thing twice. Making reservations is also very thorough; they'd like to call you twice
Recommendations: Order From Food Specials, Make Reservations For Upstairs Prior
Pros: Great atmosphere, very fun, friendly people
Cons: Somewhat expensive for things, crowded on weekends
With the exception of the white "gentleman" yelling..."Now all the white people sing..." I had a delightful time. Drinks were strong and dj was great. Service a little lacking.
Everything was good until I went to leave and tripped over there she ll and busted up my face
Had a get together their with my girlfriend and her friends. Always good times
Great food amazing atmosphere ( Mexican roll is my fav). The bartenders look as good as the food tastes the prices are deceptive enough that you'll end up spending more than you want too but you'll walk out of there satisfied and full and it won't leave you feeling stuffed and lethargic. Karioki is a good time but I prefer to be in the public aera opposed to a private booth. Listening to someone slay a song or impale themselves with the mic is half the fun.
My got to:
Shrimp tempora
Pan fried gyoza
Pork meso
2 ribeye
2 sausage
2 asparagus
2 chicken and scallion
2 Mexican roll
2 Alaskan roll
2 smoked salmon roll
Yea that's just for me...
Mediocre at best. The karaoke machines are hard to navigate and has a mininmum selection of music.
Disappointing again! The sushi is good! But upstairs for karaoke the bartenders always have an attitude! The drinks are a little high priced but not awful it's mostly the staff that are bad It's a shame
Went here yesterday night with a friend who is Japanese and has been studying as a PHD student at Penn for 10 months! He always eats Japanese food he makes himself cause he doesnt like any Japanese restaurants here . However, brought him here and he was so shocked by how authentic the dishes taste! He said it's his favorite Japanese restaurant in all of Philly and I fully agree! Really amazing recreation of the Japanese
Fun karaoke place, have to make rervations, we were a group of 5and got a deal for 2 hours of karaoke of we ordered a certain amount of food (in value). They have English, mandarin , Korean etc. Songs and playlist.
They do not have a book for song selection. Everything is automated on a touch screen so it was hard to find songs sometimes.
Some songs did not have the right music or very low music and we couldn't tell why. The food comes out relatively fast.
Overall good experience.
Very great place to go to with friends! The food is awesome and the service has been great so far!
Didnt like the shrimp tempura there.....just charge 7 dollars and give me a whole roll.....after that it was great
Fun place to sing along..or be brave and sing.. Drinks a little pricey. Parking sucks
This place was way cool .big screen Karaoke. A good telented crowd helped I am sure but. Even tho they were slammed with people from our convention The Staff was super nice. They have private rooms available for rent .Which seems like a cool idea if thats your thing but over all I had alot of fun.
Great time with a group of people in a private karaoke room. This review is for the private room experience, not the open area upstairs or the restaurant downstairs. 4 different ratings needed:
Food: Reasonable prices and decent to good food.
Karoake: Clean room that matched the size recommendation (we had 10 people in our party) Pleasantly surprised.
Drinks: Ordered over $500 in drinks and no one was even buzzed. Strongly suggest only drinking wine and beer here. There is no way they didn't deliberately add water to mixed drinks and martinis. Ordered double whiskey, would estimate 3-4oz pour max.
Service: Quick and efficient. The room had a button that you can use to call waitstaff and they answered in a very timely manor.
Overall, a great time for a group activity. Gave it 4 stars because of the alcohol, or lack thereof.
Staff were very rude and physically intimidating. A waiter screamed at us for placing backpacks under an empty table. He then refused to get the manager when we asked.
I do not know if I am getting poor or they rose price. I used to do cases studies in this restaurant and visit no less than 50 times. And recently I visited here, they charged obligated 18% tip which makes no sense. I mean that was rush hour and only myself spent 100$ there. Yakitori boy is not a premium site, now it seems a little overpriced.
Wow, actually I really not expected Yakitori boy team would reply to me. Well, for $100, it is just a murmur. (I know exactly what I ordered, with tips, since Yakitori boy shares a boss with Terakawa ramen, a newly opened store at the University City. I visited them as often as a dining hall(Penn dining is somewhat expensive and I prefer Tera always, yep, but I hope tip still set by customers, instead of estimate. I am old folk here, I would come anyway, but some new folks would not agree with my idea)
Lastly, thanks for your remainder about become a premium site. I miss you guys blue fin tuna(Toro).
Thanks for your reply, good day. Cheers.
Karaoke booths that'll get you and your group on their feet. We had some microphone issues but we all had fun. Service was wonderful. Good want the focus of our group hence 8 can't really review it. But the music collection and ambience is just great.
This is a great spot for late-nighters. Excellent food great service. It boasts private rooms and if you're in the mood for a little karaoke look no further.
The food was ok, but very over priced. The atmosphere was basically a bar: dark, loud (even when we were the only table there), and bad house music.
Went there for restaurant week and everything I got was delicious. The cocktails there were great.
Good place, great staff. One thing that I would change: their machines in their individual rooms. They use to have more intuitive machines but then upgraded to something with more lights and a touch screen. You have to get a tutorial and basically take notes in order to understand them.
I have heard a lot about this place, so when my brother suggested to celebrate there for his birthday I got excited. We got there with 6 more friends and paid for a room. Once in the room my brother food that by the way was delicious, then he ordered beers: he said "yeah!! bring me a whole bunch of beers" My believe, that was the sign for the guy taking care of us that we were drunk!!!! as so we got the beers and kept struggling with the karaoke tv that didn't have many of the Spanish songs we wanted. Everything was fine till my brother's friend decided to order Tequila's shots. The guy dropped them in the room; the glasses were full and there we drank them. Right after the drink everybody was starring at each others and quickly said "THIS IS WATER". We complained about the drinks and the manager there wanted to charge us some of the shots. After minutes of discussion with him I saw his hand shaking and I couldn't hold it no more and told him. "I am Latino and I have drank straight alcohol my entire life because that's how we do drink in my country, so you can not tell me how 40% alcohol tastes like"."your hands are shaking and you know why (either you or the bartender are steeling from us" After that the manager provided a couple sample of Tequila and of course the it was very strong. the excuse was that the bartender mixed the tequila with ice to make could. I might be wrong but it was the first time I heard the shots get mixed with ice to make it could or to reduce the alcohol %. Anyway, that was my experience at this place, so I won't go back and neither I recommended.
Great happy hour deals! Japanese pub fare, with lots of things you don't see at regular sushi or ramen focused Japanese restaurants. Many small plates, great for sharing with a group.
Great shushi and atmosphere. It's a must try if your in the area.
This review is only about the karaoke bar, not about the restaurant, never been there.
The staff at the check in: courteous
Price: very, very reasonable!
Song selection: great
Staff at the karaoke bar: rude, whether or not internationally
Unbelievably, they ran out of bottled water and we had to ask to turn the A/C on, in summer!!! They make sure that you get what you paid for, and that too, just barely.
Great food great service. Decent place to hangout and
Bar food here - yummy. Visited on Sat I believe. Definitely worth going back to. This place has an awesome atmosphere.
Had never done Japanese style karaoke before coming here and it was a great time and a pretty good deal for a couple hours of entertainment with good food and drink selection!
It's tapas basically. Delicious but expensive. However if you love food and aren't afraid to try something new and exciting, I'd say go for it.
Very small serving of food and an employee stole something from our group.
Love their sushi and I love the karaoke good for a night out with friends. Bartenders could use a little more training.
Downstairs for food, upstairs for insane karaoke situation
Came in on a Wednesday evening, bar of about 10 seats was all full, but decent seats were open in the restaurant. Service was prompt and attentive. Main hit was the food. Ordered bunch of small orders to try everything.
Started off with the mini udon, yellowtail, and 3 pieces of yakitori (beef ribs, chicken scallion, and pork belly). Udon was very flavorful and a pretty big portion for a mini. Yellowtail was very fresh and flavorful. Yakitori was good, but I'd recommend to stay with the traditional chicken ones.
Sushi was so good, so ordered another round. This time was uni, salmon, fatty tuna (not listed on the menu), tuna, and squid. All were very fresh and flavorful. Favorite was the fatty tuna as had that nice silky buttery taste. Uni was second favorite, was happy to find as many sushi restaurants don't have uni. All the fish was extremely fresh. I will return when. I stay in the downtown area again.
They have really great sushi, and their karaoke lounge is a fun place to spend a Friday / Saturday night!
Favorite spot in Philly. Been helped by Jenna for years. She is great!!!
I was told by the bartender that he could not take my karaoke song request because the place was closing in about an hour, and there were too many singers waiting...but I noticed that there were no singers for the next 25 minutes but only music playing. A song should only take about 4 minutes. Then there were a total of three singers until closing, and there was more wasted time between each of them, with just music playing. The crowd was noisy and the audio on the vocals was not loud enough to match the music. There were no serious, decent singers anyway, but only groups of people shouting the song into the microphone. On a positive note, the security staff upstairs was very friendly and helpful.
I just moved back in to Philly from Florida a few weeks ago and I'd been hearing about Yakitori Boy as one of the best Karaoke places in town. I was very excited to go. Me and my friend looked at the website to make sure he would be able to wear his hat and it stated that there are no attire requirements. The moment we got there the bouncer immediately asked my friend to remove his hat. We walked upstairs to the 2nd floor karaoke level. There were probably 100 people crammed into a space not much bigger than a North Philly basement. I'm no stranger to crowded bars but the servers kept shoving me out of the way to navigate trays through the tight crowd. It was extremely rude. I would have dealt with all of this if I would've gotten to sing in front of this gorgeous crowd.... we arrived at 11:15 and they had already stopped accepting songs for the entire night. I've been to bars that were just as crowded and kept accepting songs until an hour before close. With that much staff I just couldn't understand the concept. I will not be visiting Yakitori Boy again.
Solid food and drinks. Definitely one of my go to spots for happy hour or karaoke. Staff is usually very friendly.
We had a blast at my friend's birthday party. The service was so great!
Solid karaoke bar! Good song selection and ambiance
Loved it, never really did karaoke before first time and I loved it food was good atmosphere was chill and Poppin
Cheap and delicious. Spent all day walking around downtown and we got the best food and drinks at the best price fast and easy. Great place, I highly recommend
Going happy hour spot to let your hair down and unwind while having a good time
Karyoke was really fun, worst customer service I have seen in Philadelphia. Aggressive. Bartender. Drinks were watered. Really disappointed
Good food, service was good, hostess forgot us so we just stayed at the bar and ate. Cocktails were inconsistent when a different person made the same drink but all in all good.
Waited s long time to sing karaoke while others sang several times. It costs money to sing here.
Huge screen to view karaoke lyrics. However, you are not allowed to approach the karaoke host!! One must give the request slip to a large security guard.
Our tab totalled $15. While I was singing my one song, the bartender took our $5. change as her tip!!
Not allowed to have food (this is a restaurant?)in the karaoke area (2nd floor)...unless you rent a private room. But regulars were eating at the bar. We were starving. We left still starving.
Cannot review the food as we were not allowed to eat!
Good spot for karaoke. The machines seem a bit old but work just fine. You can order food and drinks for delivery to the room which is nice and allows the party to keep on going. I'd recommend it for groups of around 10 people.
Disappointing for a supposedly good izakaya. Sashimi was not fresh and skewers were just passable
I had the tempura shrimp and veggies which was very good. Others in my party had sushi, noodle bowls and the skewers
Which they said was good.
This place is never not a good time. It's best to visit during the week so you can actually get time in with karaoke, but even when it's packed its full of interesting people.
The food is actually exceptional here. The drinks are expensive but also good. The staff rotates at times, but they usually find a great group of people.
Highly recommended!
Went on a Tuesday for $1 skewers. Generally speaking they taste great. Small plates, so expect to spend a decent bit to fill up here, but very much worth it.
So many options, and everything is always good. Love the sushi, and the mini ramen is just the right amount.
Good sushi, service could have been more prompt and in order to sequence during restaurant week
Great fresh sushi and good drinks. Very helpful staff
We liked the food so much! The soup was very delicious. The server was nice and very helpful. We will definitely be back. Highly recommended! We will recommend to friend as well. I hope it will stay as great as it is now. Thank you!
Fun atmosphere, great service, limited song selection.
Absolutely awful. Probably the worst place I ever ate in my life; lousy food, lousy service, dont know if it can get much worse. I landed at this place by accident, do yourself a favor and stay a way. Dreadful.
My favorite Japanese restaurant in Philadelphia great service and wonderful menu. The menu is so great I have to keep one near me to order as I go
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