Today let me introduce a Japanese-styled family restaurant called "Hanaya Yohei". We have several family restaurants in my city, and those include Japanese-styled ones. But if I were to choose a very good one that serves Japanese dishes, this should be the place to visit.
Most of the Japanese-styled restaurants in my city look like this. It has tiles on the roof, and the name of the restaurant is always written in Kanji (Japanese character) or Hiragana. I usually don't visit a restaurant like this, as I prefer a western restaurant where I can have countless refills of iced coffee.
This is the interior. As you can see the ceiling light is Japanese-styled. Most of the restaurants in Japan are so bright inside, but here every seat was lighted up softly, which would make customers feel at ease.
The bottle that has black liquid is soy sauce. Of course we can see it at almost every restaurant in Japan, but people would use it more frequently at this restaurant because I saw sushi on the menu. And as you know, the round brown object in the left on the plate is a bell with which you can call the waiter.
These are desserts that have "Matcha" inside. Matcha is a variant of green tea and it tastes much bitterer than ordinary green tea. But sweets go well with this due to its bitterness.
And of course you can also have green tea. I don't think the green tea that other family restaurants serve is as good as this. You can have your cup refilled many times, or endlessly, but I think you can't have so many refills because that would bother the waiters.
I ordered a "Kani Kama Meshi Udon set" The main dish is seasoned rice topped with boiled crab, shrimp, and scallop. "Kani" means crab and "Kama Meshi" is rice in a bowl like the one you're seeing.
The green vegetable you see near side is called "Mitsuba". We put this in Miso soup or on seasoned rice such as "Sekihan".
This is Udon. I think if I had had "Kama Meshi" only, I would have felt hungry. As you can see, the broth has light color and it didn't a have strong taste. You can have Udon that has a richer taste for example at a Soba stand at a station. But the light-taste Udon is considered to be liked by the people in Kyoto.
This is called "Chawan Mushi". It is basically made from egg, and contains things like Chinese mushroom, gingko, and kamaboko. "Chawan" means a cup like this, and "mushi" means "steamed".
I could have had the rice with chopsticks directly from the Kama, but if you want to have it properly, you should use a puddle like this to put the rice in a bowl. And after putting it in the bowl, then you are supposed to have it with chopsticks.
Those who saw this blog before should know that I'm an iced coffee maniac. But since I like green tea as well, I decide to have both of them. I was thinking a Japanese-style restaurant must be bad at brewing coffee, but this one was really good.
We are now still in recession, and I've seen many restaurants go out of business, and those included Japanese-styled ones. But the dishes at this "Hanaya Yohei" are reasonably priced and taste really good. Some foreign people find Japanese food to be not agreeable, but if you come to Japan, please visit a restaurant like this =)
