All you can eat at the Italian restaurant in Japan

Yesterday I went to an all-you-can-eat Italian restaurant with a few friends. We had pizzas, pasta, antipasti, salads and of course dessert.

It was a spontaneous lunch after my daily Japanese lessons and I was so happy about the idea of going to an Italian restaurant. I haven't eaten Italian food for about a month. I have cooked pasta in my flat from time to time with some pre-made ‘bolognese’ sauces, but the inverted commas here are very important because it never tasted like this. I'm slowly cooking more and more, but I've never really cooked Italian food.

There were four of us and getting a seat in this restaurant was no problem at all. In Japan, it is often the case that you first say how many people you are and then you usually take a seat either in front of or inside the restaurant on specially placed chairs, which also determine the order in which you are allowed to eat. But as I said, that wasn't a problem here as the restaurant was very large and it was still early lunchtime so it wasn't full yet. The all-you-can-eat option cost €11.50, a real bargain if you ask me, at least for all-you-can-eat. We had 90 minutes, and were allowed to catch up as many times as we wanted.

The anticipation was great, and I quickly joined the queue for the buffet like the other Japanese visitors. The selection was okay, there were a few types of pizza and a few different pasta dishes. You could also put together your own salad, as well as some antipasti and several preparations of chicken and potatoes. I would have liked a bit more choice, but it was okay. Unfortunately, there was no tiramisu for dessert, but at least there was cake, cream, macha mascarpone and some more cake.

But nobody could take away my craving for pizza. I immediately filled two plates, one with pizza and the other with chicken, potatoes and vegetables. Then I quickly returned to the table and finally had a taste. I was very interested in how the pizza would taste, but after the first bite I was a little disappointed. After all, the pizza was thin, so it didn't have an American flavour, but was really Italian. At least that's what it looked like. When I took my first bite, however, I realised that the pizza was strangely sweet and probably had some kind of sweetener on top. There was also hardly any cheese on the pizzas. Of course, it was still delicious and more than satisfied my hunger, but I have to say I wasn't thrilled. Nevertheless, I still ate my fill, just not with pizza. However, I haven't completely given up hope of good traditional pizza, as this was only the first attempt. The vegetables and chicken were very tasty though and overall I was satisfied with my visit to the restaurant. It really was a lot of food and for the price you really can't complain.

Fortunately, I then tried some of the dessert and it was really delicious, the cake was very moist and the macha mascarpone was really something great that I hadn't tried before in Germany or Europe.

Conclusion

Japanese cuisine is very tasty, but the Japanese versions of foreign food haven't quite won me over yet, but I'm sure Asians in Germany/Europe probably say the same. I have to be honest and say that yesterday's meal made me feel a little homesick for the first time, because this little thing made me realise that I'm quite far away from my home country, where you can get something like this on every other corner. But I'm still experimenting a bit and I'll probably get back to you on this topic soon. Hope dies last, even if this pizza really was a long way from Italian food!