Restaurant costs : level ?

Dear All,

I am trying to figure out what budget to foresee for a restaurant dinners and it troubles me.

Could you give me an estimate how much a dinner would be in a %26#39;comfortable%26#39; restaurant (not high end, not low end) ?

Let%26#39;s say that the two of us would have a starter and main dish and a bottle of wine... around what amount will the bill be ?

Thanks for your clarifications !

Bart

(from Belgium / Western Europe)

Restaurant costs : level ?

Not low end, not high end, say 2000-5000 per person then. I mean that%26#39;s like a nice kick back type of place, eg TGI Fridays or something.

My advice, you%26#39;re in Japan eat like Japanese not in ';western style'; restaurants a lot, I mean its ok but do like what the average Japanese person does, go out to a Izakaya or Yakitoria for the evening and enjoy the food.

Restaurant costs : level ?

restaurant listing with menus and prices.

http://www.gnavi.co.jp/en/kanto/

Izakaya may be tough without Japanese skill. But, I agree, don%26#39;t try to eat western style in Japan, especially with the attitude that you can get a bottle of wine, unless you are willing to spend a great deal of money. Eat like locals and you will save tons of money and eat much better food. Western style food in Japan (high end French excepted) is pretty Japanized and mediocre.

This might help -http://www.bento.com/tokyofood.html

Just to reinforce Route%26#39;s advice on wine. I was with a colleague once who did a rough costing of a bottle of top class French wine in a hotel (actually in Korea but it could just as well have been Japan) and imagined it was 50 euro or so, which he said would have been about the same in France. We then did a careful calculation and discovered that it was actually 500 euro. Our employer, a university, might have been somewhat upset if he had ordered it!

Some of the best food I have had anywhere in the world has been non-Japanese food in Japan. The country has a glut of serious chefs who are well trained. There are loads of excellent Western-style restaurants in Tokyo and elsewhere, and some of them are moderately priced. The trick is to find the good places among the thousands and thousands that are merely so-so (or worse). But the same can be said for restaurants that feature Japanese cuisine. Limiting yourself to Japanese-style food will not guarantee that you will have better meals.

I like Robbie Swinnerton%26#39;s reviews on the Tokyo Food File:

www.japantimes.co.jp/life/food.html#N01

He covers a wide range of Japanese and non-Japanese cuisines and is very informative about prices. If you browse the full set of his reviews carefully it will answer your question about costs with specific examples so you can have a realistic idea of what you would spend for the types of food you are likely to eat.

Wine does tend to carry a very, very high markup in Japan.

Thanks for all the helpful information ! Really appreciated !!

Prices of stuff in Japan

tripadvisor.com/Travel-g294232-s202/Japan:Cu…