My first time in Lotteria

My internship has been over for about 2 weeks now, I’m back to the big city, Urasa… I have many things to blog about, i.e. what I did until now, but to keep some logic, I’m going to start by the end, and will finish with posts about the beginning of summer. So… Most recent thing that happened, I went for the first time to Lotteria (ロッテリア). It’s a fast food chain in Japan, much smaller than McDonald’s. It’s not coming from Italia, not from Japan, but it is a Korean burger fast-food chain. Even in Tokyo, there are not many Lotterias, I can remember one in Shibuya, one in Harajuku and one in Takadanobaba.

So during my intership I got a coupon for a discount on their newest burger (don’t remember the name, and don’t know these kanjis (although I could look for them, but laziness has me):

So after getting my Japanese driving license (details in the next blog post), I saw a Lotteria near the Driving center, and I still had the coupon, and it was lunch time, and I thought why not? So I entered Lotteria for the first time…

First thing you notice when you enter, the design of the the restaurant is not as nice as a McDonalds. McDo has more stylish restaurants, looks kind of cheap, but it’s “design”. This Lotteria looked old inside, no music, no people…

I get to the counter and order the burger with the coupon and get my discount. Fries are about same as McDonalds, but when I received the burger, I thought, wow it’s kinda smaller than the picture… Size is about the same as a Quarter Pounder, except that I thought the bread/meat ration is bigger than in McDonalds, I got the feeling of eating bread with a small steak. Secondly, this burger had nothing special, it’s like a Big Mac but smaller.

Since it wasn’t enough, I wanted to try another burger, so I tried the Cheeseburger. Result: better than McDonalds, but a much higher price. I finished my meal with a milkshake, or should I say, melting vanilla ice cream. Nothing compared to McDonalds milkshake, one of the best in terms of quality/price ratio (100 yens!).

It’s good to have a change once in a while, but… It’s not like when I was in England and I discovered Burger King (XL Double Bacon Cheeseburger, aaaaahhhh I miss u!), Lotteria won’t replace McDonalds as long as I am in Japan. Anyway, the closest lotteria from my university is more than a 100km away, so I guess it does not really matter…