Time for part 2 of my Huis ten Bosch visit! I’m writing this from Singapore because I’M BACK 😀 YAYYYY. Ok, so on to the next part.

Another reason why I wanted to visit Huis ten Bosch was the Robot Buffet Restaurant! It just opened, so it’s a bit cheaper than ‘normal’. I decided to visit during dinner time, which cost me 2990 yen (payment made upfront)

This was the entrance:

On the right is a robot that I guess serves as a distraction. You can talk to it, though it’s pretty obvious that it can’t really understand my Japanese. At least I succeeded on the second try though!

And this is the restaurant:

And a few close ups:

This robot is to entertain the people who are waiting for a table

 Not included in the menu are alcoholic drinks prepared by the robot bartender and the ice-cream prepared by the robot ice-cream man – er – robot.

the bartender of the future

 And these are the receptionists. Basically, they let you know when it’s your turn.

And this is Kevin, the ‘security guard’:

At the table is a little talking robot. The robot also keeps track of how long you’ve been there, because you have to tap it when you arrive and when you leave. I guess this is how they know you don’t overstay your time (you get one hour).

 If you can see these white lines, they are for guiding the robot cart. But, a human still has to follow them, which kind of defeats the purpose, in my opinion.

Most of the food didn’t come from a robot, but surprisingly, I liked the robot-cooked food the best. For example, this fried rice:

Perhaps I haven’t had decent fried rice in a while, but I thought this tasted great. At the very least, it’s better than the fried rice at the Chinese restaurant near school that is actually staffed by people from China.

And this is Okonomiyaki cooked by the head chef robot:

The okonomiyaki isn’t as good as a professional shop (like the one near my school), but it’s pretty tasty.

We got to see a demonstration of the robot chef cooking the okonomiyaki, and he failed at flipping one of them. The kids there were like “he failed! he failed!” and I liked their mom’s reply. She said:

“Everyone fails. You’ve failed before too, right?”

The last robot food I liked was a human-robot doughnut team. The robot makes the doughnuts and drops them into the fryer, and the human fishes them out (and then the human customer adds toppings)

I really liked the doughnuts with kuromitsu and kinako! It’s a really good combination, and I went back for seconds!

Final verdict: This restaurant is not ultra-robotic. In fact, there are quite a few human staff around, making sure things go well. The quality of the (non-robot) food is only average too – in fact, I prefer the other buffet’s selection. It’s also a little expensive, so I wouldn’t recommend it for dinner, unless that’s the only time when you can eat a buffet. I think coming here for lunch would probably the most value-for-money option.