Butagumi

After eating an amazing gyukatsu meal in the afternoon, I was looking forward to a great tonkatsu meal at night. And boy was I disappointed.

The best part of the meal was the amuse bouche. The tomato and the cookies topped with smoked butter (?) tastes really good.

The fried ground pork appetizer was decent. Then i had the Iberico and himuro pork. The himuro was 80% fat, not exaggerating here. With that much fat, of course it is tender! But isn't that also cheating?!! And I assure you that you won't have a great meal when you see your wife stacking blocks of fats costing about 2000 YEN away, would you? And of course, with that much fat, naturally, there's not much flavor. And it is not the kind that is marbled in the meat, it is the blocks of fat kind that you can easily cut off without touching the meat. Problem is, if you cut off all of the fat, the remaining 20% of meat bears all the cost of 4000 YEN! That's one expensive piece of meat!!! My heart skipped a beat everytime I see my wife cut off a block of fat off the tonkatsu. In the end she filled an entire small bowl with the fats. That has to cost 2000 YEN by weight! She did eat some of the fat reluctantly though because she knows how expensive those fats are. Nevertheless, one bowl of fat is alot!

The iberico is better, it only has 30% fat, the rest is meat, perhaps marbled with fats. Which is acceptable. But honestly I don't feel much fat in the meat. It is not as tender as an awesome kakuni I ate sometime ago at a ramen shop. But it is much more expensive! The meat is more flavorful than the himuro but it tastes nothing special. Nevertheless, it is the better choice due to much higher edible meat ratio.

The grilled cheese appetizer recommended by the waiter is really mediocre and smothered with oil. Not good at all. The croquette is mediocre too.

The worst part of the night is the boy waiter. He pulls a long face throughout the night with his eyebrows constantly frowning. When I wanted to order more food, I took the menu off a shelf myself. He looked at me angrily saying, "ASK!" (Perhaps trying to say that if I wanted to see the menu, I should ask his permission for it, instead of helping myself). Then my wife was really bothered by the fact that he snatches empty plates almost as soon as the last piece of food was lifted off the plate by our chopsticks. As though, he wants to get rid of us as soon as possible. I wasn't too bothered by that personally. When I asked for the bill, a female waiter brought it to us (she was nice), after I put my money in the bill folder, I tried to give it to the boy waiter because the female waitress was nowhere to be found. He said, "you bring it downstairs!", with his everlasting frown on his face. I thought, "ok, weird restaurant, maybe that's the policy, they don't like to bring payments to the cashier for the customers". But a minute later, the nice female waitress came with a smile and said, "I'll take it down for you" (so it is not a restaurant policy but a lazy, rude waiter not wanting to go through the trouble of taking care of bills). The female waitress helps the restaurant get an extra star from me. Unfortunately, everything else, especially the bad service of the boy waiter and the super fatty pork pulls down much of the stars to 1.

Definitely the worst meal I had in my current Japan trip. Stay away!