Cheesy Dining At Shinjuku Terrace On Valentines Day

I went on a date.. not with my partner but with my crazy friends.

Dining out with your significant other on Valentines? Not really my partner and I’s thing, especially that the culture in Japan is so different from the rest of the world. In Japan, women are expected to give chocolates to the man they like, as a sign of showing love. Even that culture we don’t practice because my partner doesn’t like chocolates that much. Besides, not dining out on Valentines day doesn’t mean my love for him is less. Char!

Anyways, my friends wanted us to hang out and celebrate friendship on this day, so Valentines became a friendship day to us. Ryan, a friend who visited us in Tokyo, was the mastermind. He probably just wanna hang out with us since his vacation’s almost over. We didn’t mind.

And so, Valentines day came and we had a reservation in Shinjuku Terrace, a restaurant near Kabukicho in the heart of Shinjuku. I think it became viral on IG because of their cheesy dishes, and we just had that on our course meal.

We booked the 6 items course meal and we were a bit excited because the pictures we saw online was really something good.

I arrived a few minutes late because honestly I wasn’t in the mood to go out after a tiring day at work. I just wanna lie in the bed and not do anything but in the end, I went out to see my friends. We’ve made plans and I think they’ll feel bad I didn’t join them.

When the elevator door opened, I was greeted with the kitchen on the side and a small aisle going to the seat where my friends were. I was kinda surprised the place was cramped, and our seats were even not so big. 2 of my friends had to sit on an ottoman-like seat. The table was good for 4 for sure, so 2 tables would accommodate 8 people only but we’re a big group of 10 people. It was a small space for us.

Since our course meal includes a drink-all-you-can, we ordered lots of alcoholic drinks. In Japan’s drinking culture, drinks should be served first and drank with the group before digging in. Some even experimented on their drinks, but I went with the classics I surely like. I only took a photo of my first drink though - ginger ale and whisky, always a favorite.

This salad arrived first. There were 2 plates, one for each table. Wait, does that mean 5 people are sharing one plate? Well, it turned out to be yeah. The salad was so good but this wasn’t enough for 5 people. This was more like good for 2 or 3 people only.

The platter came afterwards. There were chicken, sausages, bread, shrimps, broccoli, and tomatoes on it. And we’re supposed to eat them dipped in the cheese that came with it.

The cheese dip was so familiar in taste. It tasted like carbonara sauce. I know, because sometimes we use the carbonara sauce as a dip in the house. I was kinda surprised we have the same one here in the restaurant. It was delicious but.. still the platter wasn't enough for 5 people. We only had 1 each of everything. LOL

Some fried potatoes came next, didn't bother to take a photo because there's nothing special about friend potatoes. At least it's not the same shape you see in McDonalds.

Roasted chicken with fried potatoes came after. Yes, fried potatoes again. Not sure what's up with these potatoes, it's so redundant. The chicken was so-so, it wasn't bad but it wasn't exceptional either. I wish it was more flavorful though.

At this point, we were already served 4 dishes. 2 more and we're done. And we're not satisfied with the servings they gave us. We wouldn't be full with just a piece of each. We came here to enjoy our food, but it looked like they wanted us to enjoy on our conversations and drinks instead.

My friend decided to order Budae chige and everyone agreed. It's not part of the course meal but if we don't eat anything else, we'll just end up going home still hungry.

Dish #5 came and it was pasta. I didn't understand its taste. It's like tomato-based pasta with cheese but I couldn't pinpoint what pasta this was. And it was worse than the roasted chicken earlier. This was below so-so for me. @appleeatingapple didn't even like it, and it's rare for her to not like the food. It was tolerable for me, but I wish they would add more flavors to this pasta than just relying on the cheese. The sauce should be carrying the pasta, not the cheese alone.

Thankfully, our budae chige arrived. And it was kinda big. At least we got to eat properly. And it was delicious. If we didn't order this, we would still be hungry for sure.

The desserts came last. It was pudding but it wasn't tofu based, more like yoghurt but we're not sure. It's weird to have pudding like this but not tofu. Not a delicious dessert to end the night.

What's worse was that the course meal on the reservation website was for 3 hours, but when @thinkeringbart called the day before to reserve, he was informed that because there would be customers coming in after us, they'd reduce the 3 hours to 2 hours. I thought this was ridiculous but okay, I didn't complain more.

On that day though, we saw many empty tables and no customers waiting for us. Did they lie to us?

What's worse was because it was already 10pm, meaning, our time there had ended, we tried to ask for water, but they wouldn't give it to us anymore because it's already time. I mean, we understand that, we should have asked for water before our time was up, but since they're not so busy at that time because the restaurant's almost empty, they could have just given us water.

Anyhow, I left the Shinjuku Terrace with lots of complaints than a full stomach on Valentines day. It was not a great dining experience. Servings were so small, time was so limited as opposed to what they listed online, and service isn't that nice. Not to mention, our cramped space.

Was it a cheesy night? Probably, but I was a bit disappointed. It wasn't the cheese that I was expecting.

Good thing, I was with my friends so at least I was a bit happy with how our night turned out. Happy Valentines from us!

Thanks for reading!
See you around! じゃあ、またね！

^{All photos are taken using my phone unless stated otherwise.}