Botejyu — Restaurant in Makati

This is the Viva Group's entry into the food business. They got the franchise from Botejyu in Osaka, Japan, famous for its Okonomiyaki and Okosoba. Okonomiyaki is Japanese pancake, crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside with a mix of different seafood, meats or veggies. Okosoba is Okonomiyaki with Soba. Though they are a specialty restaurant for these items, their Chicken Karaage is rated #1 in Japan. So far, they have 68 restaurants in the Philippines but Viva is ambitious enough to raise it to a hundred stores by next year.

In search of affordable dishes being seniors, we scoured through the restaurants in Ayala North Exchange. Botejyu caught our eye because it offered affordable Japanese dishes (Marugame being the other chain that does).

We got 2 of their rice dishes: the Exquisite Chicken Oyako Egg Teishoku (P365) and the Grilled Charsiu Pork and Egg Rice Bowl (P350).

I enjoyed the Chicken Oyako Egg Teishoku immensely because aside from its delicious taste, it presented good value. It already came with Miso soup, side salad and Kimchi which provided a good counter to the creamy egg and chicken dish. The Charsiu Pork and Egg dish was good for the price. It was also served with side salad. We also ordered the Grilled BBQ Pork Hokkaido Style for takeout at P330. With our senior discount, we only ended up paying P680 for everything. Great price for a highly...

Food was not bad. I ordered a Yuzu Chicken Ramen but it wasn't to my liking. I'm familiar with a Yuzu Ramen (tried it before in Japan) but the chicken or how they cooked the chicken didn't complement the taste at all overall. I hope they try to improve that. The sushi rolls were good, though.

Service was good. Servers were present but not completely attentive.

The atmosphere is subpar but what I hated it the most is they lack air-conditioned machines to properly ventilate the place. I ordered ramen thinking the place will be airconed but, no.. IT WAS UNCOMFORTABLLY HOT inside and I couldn't enjoy the ramen because of it.

I've enjoyed a different branch of Botejyu before so I hope this branch can improve, knowing that they are centered in a business district and will probably be met with not just foreigners alike but those of the working class who chose to eat...

I am a Japanese and I had Tonkotsu ramen and Gyoza. First of all, operation was so slow, it took them for more than 20 minutes to serve my food, even though there are no other customers. Ramen is supposed to be served quickly like in 5 to 10 minutes after customer order. Because what they have to do is just boil the noodles after they take order, since soup is ready. Gyoza tasted very weird, flavour was something wrong not tasty at all. Staff is not friendly, no smile, looks just grumpy. If they say that they serve authentic Japanese food, they should provide Japanese customer services too. It costed me more than 700 pesos, totally not...