Tere!
Wakayama is full of nature, and the number of options to eat out is much smaller than Osaka or Tokyo. However, there are some advantages to eating out in Wakayama.
First, it’s cheap. Simply because Wakayama is a countryside prefecture, it costs less than a metropolis. Second, the ingredients are fresh. Particularly seafood is fresh and tasty. We also have local chicken species. Since they are fresh, it doesn’t smell badly like fish you can get in Europe.
In this article, I summarise six eating places that I went to in my hometown, Wakayama.
Table of Contents
1. French restaurant chilo
2. Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant
3. Izakaya Snufkin
4. Ktype chocolate company
5. Nigiwai ichiba (market)
6. Wakaya
★Summary
1. French restaurant chilo
French restaurant chilo is located in Tanabe, and it’s near the Tanabe police station. It doesn’t look like a restaurant because it’s in the regular house building. However, there are signs in front of the restaurant, so it won’t be too difficult to find it. A car park is just a few seconds away from there.
The restaurant looks more like an old style Japanese cafe called “Kissaten”, and it’s quite small. There were only five or six tables, and the maximum capacity is probably around 15.
They offered us two types of lunch menu: type A and type B. Type A had only one main dish whilst type B had two main dishes (meat and fish). My friend and I chose type B, so we selected two different fish dishes and two different meat dishes.
Our choices for meat dishes were chicken thigh (I forgot what the sauce was), and aigamo (which is a mixed bird of duck and mallard) with pear sauce. On the other hand, one of the fish dishes was fish poêlé (I also forgot which fish), and the other one was sea bream.
Although it was a lunch menu, since it was a full course, there was soup, one appetiser, and two main dishes, and we got full. However, we tried a daily cake in the end as well, which was a Basque cheesecake. Since we were both full, we ordered only one portion, and shared it.
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I know this is not relevant to any Japanese cuisine, however, it is worth going there. In case you get sick of Japanese cuisine, you can get French cuisine in Tanabe. My friend and I went there at lunch time, and yet they offer a dinner menu too.
2. Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant
Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant is not a fancy restaurant at all. It seems to be a local chain restaurant in Tanabe, and my home village has one. Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant Misu is near the secondary school in Misu, and if you wish to visit there somehow, you definitely need a car as there is no bus around there.
I went to Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant to have some lunch. The menu was sufficient and traditional Japanese style, and you can select a meal (teishoku), bowl or noodles. You can have some pints there too.
They also have a daily menu. I kind of wanted to try, but the daily menu when I went there was “oden” which is a pot meal, having different stuff such as white radish, surimi products, boiled eggs, beef, and so on. I didn’t choose this one because I had oden at the previous day’s dinner.
So I ordered “Oroshi Tonkatsu Teishoku”. Teishoku is a plate which consists of a bowl of rice, miso soup, a main dish, and one small side dish or more. Everything but “hamburg” which is like a meat patte in a burger is Japanese. “Tonkatsu” is deep fried pork with panko (like schnitzel). If you see “oroshi” in a menu, it means “with grated white radish”.
In addition to “oroshi tonkatsu”, rice, and miso soup, there were a few side dishes: salad, macaroni salad, okla Japanese salad and pickled radish. The side dishes often change in any teishoku restaurant. In Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant, it was said to change too.
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The taste overall was quite light. Given that you prefer thicker tastes, then it may not be satisfactory. However, I prefer lighter tastes, it was all good. The portion was pretty a lot, and I got full after eating. At Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant, you can have a bigger bowl of rice for free. I had a regular size.
The point that I might have been wrongly served is that I didn’t feel that there was enough grated white radish. I thought it was in the sauce, but if so, it was very little. Usually, if the menu says “oroshi”, there is a handful of a mountain of grated white radish. That was kind of disappointing though.
Before going to Ayumi Fukushi Restaurant, I read a review on Google map that the tastes were good, but the service wasn’t. On the contrary, I didn’t feel so. The waiters and cooks were energetic as well as polite.
When paying, you shouldn’t not wait for a waiter in Japan. After ordering, they usually leave a check note, so you need to bring it to the check out. Then you pay. I was in a European mode, so I was waiting though I’m Japanese. 😂
The payment? Of course I used cash, and it cost only 700 JPY (approximately less than 5 EUR with a rate then)!
3. Izakaya Snufkin
My local friend K and I went to Izakaya Snufkin near Tanabe station. In 2019 when I visited Japan, I went there with her. The owner of Snufkin has followed my Facebook page and sometimes gives me “Likes”, so I wanted to visit there again.
You may not know what “Izakaya” is. Izakaya is a common type of restaurant in Japan. It might be similar to a gastro pub as you can drink and eat. In some izakaya restaurants, they offer you “otoshi” which is like a set of appetisers. The contents of otoshi are different depending on the izakaya or a season, etc. This is included in the check.
In the izakaya, Japanese customers often have a medium size glass of beer called “namachu”. Try to say it and order it so you can impress them 😂 They also surely have some sake. Here is a note; “sake” means alcohol in general in Japanese. We call it “nihonshu” in real life.
Friend K ordered namachu, and I had nihonshu “Kuroushi” (black bull). Kuroushi is from Wakayama, and it is super easy to drink so be careful not to get drunk too fast.
Izakaya often has a variety of food menus too.
Starting with otsukuri (a set of raw fish), we had octopus tempura, broccoli salad, fried potatoes (very thin!), deep fried tofu in soup and so on. The master gave us a bowl of “negitro”. Toro is tuna, and negi is spring onion. It’s a handful of crushed tuna with spring onion, and we ate it with soy sauce. In a sushi restaurant, you can have this with sushi rice, and that’s my favourite. The rice can be sushi rice, but at home it can go with warm rice too. Both are tasty.
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I’ve never paid by card there but only in cash, hence I’m not sure if you can use a card. Remember, when travelling in Japan, it’s never bad to bring cash. In our case, the total cost was around 9,000 JPY for the two of us.
When I visit Japan again next time, hopefully in 2024, I want to come to Sunfukin with friend K again. Therefore, I do hope Snufkin beats the difficulty of running own izakaya due to COVID.
4. Ktype chocolate company
Friend T who I went to the French restaurant with and I went to Ktype chocolate company in Shirahama. This is a quite new chocolate shop in Shirahama, and the factory is in the same place.
They basically have three different types of chocolate based on which country cacao came from. I’m not sure if they can speak English, but they explain how different those chocolates are, by letting you try pieces of those chocolates. When we went to Ktype chocolate company, they were selling chocolate with Wakayama mikan (like mandarins) peels. I didn’t buy it, and unfortunately they didn’t have any for tasting at that time.
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In Ktype chocolate company, you can get some sweets and drinks too. They have chocolate cheesecake, chocolate cookies, chocolate brownie, and some chocolate or cacao drinks. Friend T got hot chocolate with chocolate from Ghana, and I had cacao soda. Cacao soda wasn’t strongly sparkling, and it tasted a bit sour. I personally liked it, and I imagined that it would be very nice to have it in summer, walking in Shirahama under the sun along the beach or the coast.
5. Nigiwai ichiba (market)
I went to Katsuura in Wakayama with my old friends from primary and secondary school.
In Katsuura there is a seafood market called “Nigiwai ichiba”. “Ichiba” means market, and at Nigiwai ichiba there are lots of local products. You can buy especially fresh tuna chunks.
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However, we went to Nigiwai Ichiba just for lunch. There are multiple small restaurants. You can take a seat in the eating place, having different dishes from different restaurants.
To order a meal, you need to pay at the check out machine. There you can browse the entire menu. We browsed, and decided to have tuna bowls.
We were waiting for a while, but they didn’t call our numbers. Then we realised that we didn’t pass our numbers like tickets to the restaurant! Such eegits. 😂 When you go there, don’t forget to do it. If you don’t know what exactly to do, ask them.
We waited another few more minutes, and they served us a tuna bowl. Don’t imagine something like a poke bowl. This bowl consists of only rice and parts of tuna. What you need to add to taste is only add the soy sauce that is served together.
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In Nigiwai Ichiba, you can also have Wakayama (local) ramen, deep fried tuna or whale, tuna teishoku, etc.
Our tuna bowl cost 1,000 JPY (around 8 EUR). Bring cash.
6. Wakaya
In Katsuura, there are Nachi waterfalls. It’s a quite famous tourist place. While going up the mountain, you can see the waterfalls. I’m not sure if there is a bus, but probably there are buses as I saw some car parks for buses.
Wakaya is a Japanese cafe in the Nachi waterfalls area. There is a souvenir shop together with Wakaya cafe. They don’t have a huge menu, and yet they have their original Japanese sweets such as “Otaki mochi”.
Mochi is sticky rice cake, and made from rice that is not for regular meals.
We ordered a set of a drink and Otaki mochi. As for drinks, you can choose coffee, sencha tea (if I remember correctly) as well as matcha. Since I was a tourist (!), I had a cup of matcha.
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They grill Otaki mochi in the cafe, so you can have warm mochi. Inside of Otaki mochi, there is bean jam. Matcha at Wakaya tasted quite bitter at first, but then it tasted milder because Otaki mochi is sweet, and bitter matcha matched.
This set cost 600 JPY (4 EUR) with any aforementioned drinks. I would personally recommend matcha as even in Japan, it’s not so ordinary and easy to get matcha in a cafe.
★Summary
I would say that the countryside areas don’t have many places to eat out although you can get fresh ingredients.
I stayed in Tanabae for only two weeks with only one set of weekends, but still it was enough.
Next time I visit Japan, I would go to Snufkin again with the same friend. On this trip, my favourite one was Wakaya on the other hand since I was glad to have matcha and otaki mochi, which combination is very Japanese.
Matcha latte is good, and yet I would recommend trying real bitter matcha with Japanese sweets.
Aitäh! 🙂
zooks.ee 