How many people can you take for a birthday?

We do not publish a capacity, because the honest answer depends on whether the group is seated or standing, which part of the room you want and which night it is. Send the date, the rough number, seated or standing, and the area you have in mind through the events form and we will answer properly.

Do we need to decorate the room ourselves?

No. The room is a jungle on two levels with a hanging garden and a gorilla on the mezzanine. Most groups bring people and nothing else.

How late can a birthday party go on?

We are open until 03:00 every day and there is no separate earlier finish for a group.

Yes, there is live music and a DJ booth. The room is loud enough that a table celebrating is normal rather than an intrusion, which is worth knowing in both directions: if the group wants to talk, book earlier and ask for the courtyard or the terrace.

Can you cater for vegetarians and people who do not eat raw fish?

Yes. The kitchen runs a charcoal grill and a sushi list at the same time, and there is a full vegetarian section rather than a single dish. A mixed group is the normal case here rather than a problem.

Choosing a birthday venue in Athens

Booking a birthday somewhere is mostly a question of avoiding the specific ways an evening goes wrong, and those are predictable. This is the list of things worth asking any venue in Athens, with our own answers underneath each one, including the question we will not answer over email and why.

It is written for the person doing the organising, who is usually not the person whose birthday it is and who will get the blame either way.

1. Can the table be loud

This is the one that decides the night. A room where a group singing feels like an intrusion will quietly ruin a birthday, and you cannot tell from photographs. Ask directly whether other tables will mind.

Here, no. There is live music and a DJ booth and the room is built to carry sound, so a table making a noise is part of the evening rather than an interruption of it. That cuts both ways, which is the next question.

2. Can you still hear each other

The same volume that lets you celebrate stops you talking. If the birthday is a dinner with conversation, loud is a problem, not a feature.

The room runs on two levels and the sound is not even across them. Early in the evening you can hold a conversation at a table of eight without anybody repeating themselves. Later the back gets louder than the front and the terrace becomes where people go to hear each other. If the group wants to talk, book early and ask for the courtyard or the terrace. If it wants the other thing, come late and sit inside.

A venue that says the sound is perfect everywhere is describing a room it has not listened to.

3. What time does it actually end

Ask for the real closing time rather than the one on the website, and ask what happens to a group still there at the end of it.

We are open until 03:00 every day, which is late enough that the question usually does not arise. There is no separate earlier curfew for a group and no point at which the lights come on to move you along.

4. How much decorating will you have to do

Bare function rooms are cheap for a reason. The cost moves rather than disappears, and it lands on whoever spends a Saturday with balloons.

This is a jungle on two levels with a hanging garden on the upper terrace and a giant gorilla on the mezzanine. Almost nobody sits down before photographing him. Somebody once had him made in cake, which is either the highest compliment the room has received or a warning, depending on temperament.

The practical point is that you can turn up with people and nothing else. There is nothing here that needs improving with bunting.

5. Will the food suit everybody

Groups contain a vegetarian, somebody who does not eat raw fish, and somebody who only wants a steak. A single-idea menu makes that somebody's problem.

The menu runs a charcoal grill and a sushi list at the same time, which is unusual and useful here. There is picanha off the grill, a set of signature rolls, a vegetarian section that is not an afterthought, and eggs served until 16:00 if the birthday starts earlier than most.

Sharing works better than individual courses for a group this size, and the starters are built for it.

6. The question we will not answer by email

How many people fit. Every venue in Athens will give you a number and most of those numbers are optimistic, because a capacity depends on whether the group is seated or standing, which part of the room it has, and what night it is.

We do not publish a capacity figure, and we are not going to invent one in a guide. A number promised in August and discovered to be wrong in November is worse than no number at all, and it is the single most common way a venue booking falls apart.

What we will do is answer it properly once we know the date, the rough size, whether it is seated or standing and which part of the room you want. Send those four things through the form on the events page and somebody will reply with something real.

And the practical bits

Parking: the nearest car park is about 80 metres away at Papadiamantopoulou 26 and Michalakopoulou, open 24 hours. It is independent, so we cannot tell you what it charges.

Getting here: Brazil Square in Ilisia, five minutes from the Hilton and five from the Megaron, which makes it easy to explain to people arriving separately.

And if the birthday is really an excuse for a late night rather than a dinner, what happens here after midnight is the more relevant page.