📍Location: Chiayi. Budai
Personal Summary: The food was quite good, but the serving times were very inconsistent, making the dining experience quite unsatisfactory. Additionally, I dislike restaurants with opaque pricing, so I cannot give a good review.

This time, we specially came to Budai for seafood!
The more famous Heipi Seafood Restaurant next door only offered set dishes for a group of people during the Spring Festival and did not provide a la carte options, so we looked for another seafood restaurant next door (although there aren’t many nearby, we just searched randomly).

🙂‍↔️Let’s first discuss the negative aspects:
I personally care a lot about transparent pricing. The restaurant didn’t provide a physical menu and only had a printed menu on the wall, which indicated prices for large, medium, and small portions. However, I think it’s difficult to have a "uniform price" for different types of seafood. When it came time to pay, the owner listed the prices for each dish, which indeed did not match the menu.

Furthermore, we asked the owner how "large, medium, and small portions" were determined. The reply was, "I decide based on how many of you there are."
While it sounds considerate for the owner to recommend portion sizes based on the number of people, it actually felt somewhat coercive in deciding the portions. For those who have a budget for a meal, it’s almost like unboxing a surprise box.

Regarding the seafood, the owner also strongly recommended a dish with two preparations of one fish, so we ordered a fish. Choosing the fish on-site seemed great, but how the fish was priced was only revealed later.
A small fish for two preparations cost $630. To be honest, I don’t know what the average price range for that fish is. Could it actually be an expensive fish? (We just wanted to eat fish, not to be foodies indulging in delicacies.)
The owner only talked about the texture and quality of the fish, but didn’t provide a price upfront (it was only known at checkout). So, how big was the fish? I couldn’t take a picture as the owner quickly whisked it away, but the steamed fish in the photo was basically just the body without the head or tail.
What happened to the fish head, tail, and bones? They were all made into miso soup.

🍲Regarding the serving time:
The sequence of dishes was as follows:
Oyster Omelet ➡️ Stir-fried Water Lily ➡️ Fried Noodles with Oysters ➡️ Steamed Fish ➡️ Fish Soup

But the feeling of waiting was:
Oyster Omelet ➡️ Stir-fried Water Lily ➡️➡️Fried Noodles with Oysters➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️Steamed Fish➡️Fish Soup

Basically, we finished the first three plates before the steamed fish arrived, and even the empty plates had been cleared away.
No matter how tender the fish was, it felt dry to eat... (The flavor was very plain with nothing to pair it with). At one point, we even thought if the dishes didn’t arrive soon, we might as well not eat and urged for the dishes, which took a while to arrive afterward.

🐟Regarding the taste:
My family praised the taste of the dishes, but personally, I feel that "as long as the seafood is fresh enough and cooked properly, it can taste good." The fish market is nearby, and we are at the harbor, so if the seafood isn’t fresh enough, this restaurant would probably get a negative review.

🥘This time's meal cost:

Fried Noodles with Oysters $120 * 2 portions
One Fish Two Preparations (Steamed1 + Soup1) $630
Stir-fried Water Lily $150
Oyster Omelet $280
(No extra rice ordered)

Three people were quite full after eating, but personally, I felt full from the soup rather than the actual dishes; without soup, it was about 70% full.
The taste was passable, and the establishment was relatively clean, so if there weren’t really other options nearby, I might consider it again. (Budai is indeed a rural township, and there aren’t many shops around).

🅿️Regarding parking:
Since there’s a public fishing market nearby, there are both free public parking and paid private parking. The private parking isn’t too expensive ($10/visit).
We were originally worried that there would be no parking space due to the crowd, so we parked at a private lot as soon as we saw one. There were quite a few parking spaces; even though there seemed to be a lot of cars in line on the road, it was mostly just people walking slowly to park.

The nearest parking lot is a 3-minute walk to the restaurant.