Bubba Gump Shrimp

Rating: Nasty
Meal:  Lunch for 3
Price:  6000 yen
Payment:  Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Kid's pizza, artichoke dip, shrimp mac'n'cheese, shrimp soup with rice and dipping bread
English Menu:Yes

Smoking: No

Check out those prices!

We are not chain restaurant types, but we'd never eaten at Bubba Gump Shrimp and there was one at the Lalaport Toyosu mall.  After church this morning we went to the other side of the mall to check out a store there and since Bubba Gump Shrimp was on that side, we decided why not?  For science!

Artichoke dip, airplane special

The theme restaurant was very well done from an artistic perspective.  I had no idea it was directly inspired by the movie Forrest Gump, but it's a one for one rendition, complete with pithy Gumpisms all over the place and plenty of southern kitsch on display.  The artificially aged corrugated tin roofs were very nice done.

Pizza with extras

Ok, that's enough nice things to say, let's get on with it.  This place is horrible.  Disgusting.  Don't go there please.  (Actively discouraging people from going there is pretty much an automatic "nasty" qualification)  First, the food was awful.  We had hopes it would be a guilty pleasure, but no.  Even our son didn't like his kids pepperoni pizza, which is impressive.  The artichoke dip came with plenty of tortilla chips, but was itself like microwaved airplane food.  So much so that it has stuck with us all day in a most unpleasant fashion, the reason I refuse to eat airplane food anymore.  The mac'n'cheese was a dull mush, the shrimp within extremely chewy for some reason.  The same held true for the shrimp in the dipping soup, though the soup itself didn't taste terrible, just a bit too salty and, like everything else, like it was poured out of a can that was shipped over from some central warehouse in the US.  My wife even commented that it seemed that other customers were chewing on their shrimp with a rather puzzled expression (shrimp shouldn't be chewy...).  The tortilla chips weren't bad, same for the bread and rice, but neither were they great.  Overall, a complete bust.

Shrimp mac'n'cheese

The best part was the price...it was insane!  No good lunch sets, everything was at least 1200 or more, and best of all it excluded tax and a 10% service charge?  What on earth for?  The staff was useless and we waited quite some time trying to get someone's attention to take our order.  Automatic service charge for large groups?  Sure, I get it, but for 3 people?  So our bill was 5000 yen (too high already for what we ate) before that and jumped to 6000 yen by the time those extras got tacked on.  Really, that puts it in the category of awful...bad, expensive food.  Do not recommend.

Soup, rice and bread