Budootei, Makuhari

Soon after arriving at Rob's office in Makuhari (Chiba) last Friday evening, we went in search for dinner around the World Business Garden WBG, which is where Rob's office is located. We settled on a yoshoku-ya called Budoutei that served pizza, pasta, salads and paella. Rob raves about their salads that he sometimes has for lunch, and I was curious to try one myself. Their paella (or rather the plastic model of the paella) looked to be quite a decent size too so it didn't take long before we decided that Budoutei was where our dinner was.

This place is quite gaijin-friendly (no surprise here considering the number of expats in this location) with plastic models of food on display and some romaji on the menu. And the menu items are quite reasonably priced. I don't really know if the staff speaks any English because we didn't try speaking English to them. Service was good and friendly, punctual and professional. The restaurant had a nice ambient atmosphere, dimly lit and quiet chatter. Quite a nice place for a quiet dinner for two.

We liked the sound of the Smoked Salmon and Hotate (scallop) Salad (880yen) and the Seafood Paella, so we didn't need much time after being seated to place our order. The salad was yummy! It had quite a simple vinaigrette dressing, but the smoked salmon was good, and the raw hotate was really fresh. The seafood paella was served in its paellera and there was plenty to fill both of us. It was very well seasoned and tasty, with plenty of seafood which included king prawns and smaller prawns, mussels, squid and clams. I was delighted to see that the traditional medium-grained rice was used in the paella (unlike the Japanese short grains used in the paella at Nihon Kai Club). I think the paella at Budoutei is better than Nihon Kai Club's in terms of taste and value for money.

The salad and the paella:


I was very happy that night because I saw Rob for the first time in two weeks, and we had a yummy meal soon after. But the 10-course lunch we had at Yonemura in Ginza the next day made me even happier (eventhough it was for Rob's birthday celebration). I'm looking forward to writing the review for Yonemura, but it may be awhile yet because an unexpected (and sad) event came up which calls for us to be in Perth for the next week.