Olive House, Maruhiro, Kawagoe

Mediocre food, price, menu, layout and atmosphere

I hate when you are paying for a dining experience and you walk away wishing you had eaten somewhere else. I am not a huge fan of Olive House anyway, but particularly not the branch in Maruhiro, Kawagoe. The quality is not worthy of the price. The positives; the food is edible, they have an English menu, the kids lunch is substantial, the premises are clean and the staff are efficient. The menu is quite limited in this branch. They really only have pasta on offer for lunch. They have some variation, but nothing really appealed to me on the menu so I played it safe with a pasta with muscles. The plate is huge, the portion is not. I got about 5 muscles in my pasta. They were large, but few. The kids meal however is a decent size and comes with some nice sides for an adult, but not so appealing for children. Also, each of the sides was drenched in sauces, which is not ideal for small children. The pasta dish for kids was also a bit heavy on the Parmesan cheese; again not ideal for small children. You do get a toy with the kids meal, which you choose from a basket of plastic toys. The price for the kids meal is quite fair too. The restaurant is clean, but not comfortable and the layout and decor do little to set an atmosphere or mood for the place. There were very few people there when we visited at lunch time, meanwhile nearby restaurants had people queuing to get in. This branch of Olive House is open 10.30 am to 7 pm on the days that Maruhiro is open, which is most days of the month, but sometimes they schedule in a day off or two.