The owners of Dublin restaurant and bar Yamamori Izakaya have hit back at complaints made by the neighbouring Hoxton Hotel amid claims of late night noise.
The restaurant’s owners said they find it “extremely difficult” to accept claims made by the new hotel, which is seeking an injunction against the nightclub, that they are not seeking to “curtail cultural or nightlife activity”.
The hotel, formerly known as the Central Hotel, on Exchequer Street, adjoins Yamamori Izakaya, which has operated for decades as a restaurant and bar, which plays live music several nights a week.
Hoxton Hotel made headlines last week after its leaseholder, Trinity Hospitality, sought an injunction against Yamamori Izakaya over the alleged late-night noise.
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A crowd of well over 100 people attended a protest outside the hotel on Tuesday evening. DJs played music while people chanted: “Whose city? Our city!”
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett told protesters they were “standing up for the heartbeat of what this city is really about”.
“If our reputation in this city and internationally is anything, it’s about music, it’s about culture, it’s about the arts. And we say no to the corporate squeeze-out of grassroots culture and music.”
Boyd Barrett said cultural spaces in the city need to be protected. The crowd booed when he spoke about the closure of The Complex arts centre across the river Liffey near Capel Street last month after an emergency meeting between Dublin City Council and the Arts Council proved unsuccessful.
He said artists are often “taken for granted” by those in power and called on the crowd to “stand up for culture, stand up for the arts”.
Claire Long (29) said she attended the protest because she is “really angry” about the number of cultural spaces in Dublin which have closed in recent years.
“It’s happened time and time again,” she said.
The fact Izakaya is one of the few venues in the city without an entrance charge “makes such a difference”, she said, “it’s an equaliser, anyone can come in”.
Long said the age range of people at the protest showed how important venues like Izakaya are to people from different generations.
Amy Caulfield (27) said she was worried about the wider “trend” of cultural spaces like The Complex closing.
“Dublin has become very corporate and lots of smaller venues, we have a lot less that other cities. Less and less smaller venues are opening.”
The Hoxton claimed complaints from its guests due to late-night music from Yamamori Izakaya has resulted in the withdrawal of 31 of its 129 bedrooms.
In a statement last week, the group behind the Hoxton, Trinity Hospitality, said it “has been seeking to engage constructively with Yamamori Izakaya since late November to conduct joint acoustic testing across both the restaurant unit and the hotel bedrooms”.
The hotel group said the testing had not yet happened, leaving it with “no choice but to seek this injunction”.
Yamamori offered to install sound-limiting devices and suggested that the hotel be soundproofed during its refurbishment.
Trinity Hospitality says it did install “extensive sound-mitigation measures” during the refurbishment, but it now wants “further acoustic works on the Yamamori side”.
On Friday, it said acoustic testing had now been agreed to go ahead.
In a new statement issued earlier on Tuesday, Yamamori Izakaya’s management team said they found it difficult to believe the company “would like to see us thrive” and found the hotels’ actions “inconsistent with these sentiments”.
“It is also hard to accept the company’s claim that it had no choice but to seek the injunction, it chose not to provide the requested information which would have facilitated a meeting between the respective experts immediately,” the statement said.
“When the company raised the matter in late November 2025, we immediately agreed to meet to discuss the issue and requested information about the sound attenuation measures that were installed,” they said.
Yamamori Izakaya claimed they only received the requested information from Hoxton on Tuesday morning.
“Rather than provide this information in a timely manner the company sought an injunction,” they said.
“The company’s claim that we have not engaged and have acted unreasonably is incorrect and should not have been made. The agreed testing on 14th and 15th February 2026 was of limited use save that it highlighted several issues that the company will have to clarify,” the statement said.
“We are now analysing the technical data that we had originally asked for in November last year,” it concluded.
An online petition entitled Save Yamamori Izakaya From Being Shut Down had been signed by over 6,500 people as of Tuesday.
