Lantern by Wagaya

Enjoyed a nice soft shell crab hand roll (which I didn’t get a photo of because it looked too good and I devoured it already) and a bento box. A friend of mine recommended me here and it would’ve been difficult for me to find the restaurant alone as it is located upstairs.
Anyways, the food was great. Not sure if i can comment on customer service as the ordering system is via an iPad. Presentation of the hand roll was really nice and the soft shell crab was to die for. However, I think the bento Box can be improved on as the chicken was slightly on the drier side and im unsure what the fried tofu was doing drowning in a puddle of sauce in the corner.
But all in all, it was a decent eat and would probably stop by again for another go :)

At first appearances, Lantern looks awesome. It has been fit out relatively recently, based on an established format in Wagaya, and it looks good. The rooms look good, the people look good, everything looks good.
For a while.
By late at night, the place was starting to get dirty. Don’t even ASK about the bathroom. Eugh. It probably doesn’t help that with drinks ordered by touch screen and just dropped off (which I have to admit is kinda awesome), RSA is almost impossible, so I suspect there were some very, very drunk people there. But there was also a sense that they had just slightly too few staff to cope with the drunken, late-​night rowdiness.
The Karaōke itself was pretty good, although like so much Karaōke, the collection of songs was sometimes disappointing. All the artists were there, pretty much, but often not the songs they were famous for. But maybe I just have weird taste in music.
All in all, given the huge number of karaōke places in the city, I don’t think I’d go back to this one. The convenience of having drinks delivered to the room did not offset the ickyness.

Great food, sizeable portions and reasonable prices. The menu works the same way as at Mizuya (touch-​screen ordering) and the service is really fast too. The karaōke is pretty cheap and the rooms are nice and clean.

I come here just for Karaōke.
Their songs are new, the sound system is good. Toilets are clean.
We ordered takoyaki as snacks.
I am happy with $ 15 for 3 hours.

This place is by the same owner as the Wagaya restaurant along Quay St so the menu is very similar.
The only addition to this is that this place has some karaōke rooms (which you can get 2 hours for free if you go around lunchtime and spend at least $ 20 per person on food and drink, which is perfect for those boozy lunches or corporate team building events).
Because this place is very new, the karaōke system has some of the very latest songs (for K-​Pop anyways), and the touch screen system is probably one of the best.
The biggest downside is that there is no remote control so if you want to choose a song, you need to go over to the touch screen to do so.
I’d recommend this place for lunch because there’s a nice bento box special for $ 10 — and if you bring another person along, you get a private karaōke room which you can just play music videos if you want to)

The place is alright.
Most of the time you’ll end up listening to some lousy songs that other people sing…
The meals are not what I am expecting when the first time I entered the premises.
Not a real Japanese food…

Heard from a friend that Wagaya had expanded their horizons and opened up a karaōke branch to compete with the likes of Mizuya up the road. After being told there was a 50% opening special during April I just had to go check it out.
ROOM
As we had 7 people we were allocated a medium size room which is meant to sit up to 8 people. It was probably only just right for the 7 of us. The table was also quite small for the amount of food and drink we ordered.
They have all the latest Chinese and English songs as expected. The only downside is needing to stand to use to touch screen song selector. At other karaōke places you can sit to do this.
FOOD
The menu and touch screen ordering system is exactly like wagaya and food quality is just as great as the original restaurant. Of the new dishes I tried I was pleasantly surprised by the Wafu pizza. Only disappointment was the ice-​cream. If nobody had told me I was eating sesame/​green tea I would have thought I was eating vanilla ice-​cream.
SERVICE
The food came out so super quick that my friend who was late by 10 minutes walked in and said «where did all this random food come from?» As soon as it’s in the system it just takes a few minutes for it to be at your table.
When we got our bill we expected a 50% discount so were confused when this wasn’t applied. The sign said «50% off applies to all room charges».
We were told that this is just for the room hire and not for food and drink. Very very misleading! We had a word with the manager who wouldn’t budge on his position. If we had spent less than the $ 300 minimum spend we would have needed to pay an hourly room charge from which the 50% could have bee applied. I then told him on the screen there was no room charge though.
His reply was that if we didn’t spent $ 300 the room hire would have been added at the end. Again very misleading!!!
OVERALL
After the bill ordeal the manager did offer us a 10% staff discount which is apparently the max the system can take. So whilst we weren’t happy with the misleading information communicated to us, and we made comments amongst ourselves of filing a complaint with the department of fair trading, $ 270 for 23 dishes, 3 jugs of Chivas Green Tea and 3 hrs of karaōke really is quite a good deal so I’m sure we will eventually go back.