A trip to 大阪 Osaka cannot be without a walk on 道頓堀 Dotonbori!
We idled for quite a while at a cafe in 難波駅 Namba Station before the skies turned dark and we reluctantly get up from the comfortable seats and made our way to 道頓堀 Dotonbori in the slightly drizzling weather.
The first thing to do was of course to take picture with the famous Glico Man, showing a giant athlete on a blue track as a symbol of the Glico candy (headquartered in 大阪 Osaka)!
We travelled from 京都 Kyoto to 大阪 Osaka and first thing we did after dropping our luggage with the hotel was to visit 黒門市場 Kuromon Market! This market has more than 190 years of history and tradition, and is often called “Osaka’ s Kitchen” because of the number and variety of food and products that it contains.
The market is a must-go whenever we are in 大阪 Osaka because we simply love the hustle and bustle of a very lively Japanese market. Or for that matter, any market in any vacation that we go!
The friendly shouting of the stall holders amidst the selling, the abundance of food for tasting, and the smell of the freshness of the produce made us instantly perked up, despite a very rainy day in 大阪 Osaka!
So this is our final night in 京都 Kyoto, and we just had to have a feast!
Hubby was looking through a magazine in our hotel and found an advertment that showed a しゃぶしゃぶ 食べ放題 Shabu Shabu Buffet with an affordable price, and so here we are!
This is an 180-years old establishment which has a very elegant Japanese garden at the entrance that instantly gave us a calming and welcoming atmosphere as we walked into the restaurant. We ordered the 上牛と特選豚すきしゃぶ食べ放題 Superior Beef and Special Pork Suki Shabu Buffet (¥3680+8% tax per pax with 10% discount from a coupon in the magazine 🙂 ) where we could enjoy both すきやき Sukiyaki (meat cooked in soy sauce broth) and しゃぶしゃぶ Shabu Shabu (meat cooked in clear broth) in the same pot!
So I have been wanting to relive the what I call 一蘭 Ichiran experience over again ever since I tried it in 福岡 Fukuoka many years ago. This is a classic とんこつラーメン Tonkotsu ramen shop that started from the 60s and have been dishing out ramen all over Japan over the years 24 hours a day.
The 一蘭 Ichiran experience starts from ordering your noodle and extra ingredients using a vending machine (or coupon machine). Then you wait in line for the server to assign you a cubicle. Yes you need to dine in a cubicle ALONE. Haha…
Once you are seated in a cubicle, you will face a wooden window where a server will appear from behind and collect your order. This is also the time when you can indicate your choice of thickness of noodle, hotness of sauce etc. Then you wait for the noodle to be served, again through the wooden window. This, my dear friends, is the 一蘭 Ichiran experience! 🙂
We were quite famished for dinner and decided that we should have a great meal for this last night in 四国 Shikoku!
So we found some seats (and drinks) in Seattle Best Coffee in 高松 Takamatsu which had free wifi, and off we went in search of good food in cyberland. 😛
We had listed a few and started walking around to find them only to realise that most of them were closed, mainly because it was a Sunday today. So sad…
Then we laid our eyes on this 焼鳥 yakitori shop and the bright lights attracted us. Plus it advertised もつ鍋 Motsu Nabe! We were definitely in need of hot pot to counter this very cold day!
We slept through the entire journey and finally made it back to 岡山 Okayama from 神戸 Kobe.
As we were walking from the train station back to the hotel, we were also looking out for dinner places. 😛
I saw a bright lantern saying おでん Oden and pointed it out to the girls. We went closer to the shop but were not too confident about venturing inside and ordering because we saw that it was a standing bar of sorts. Just as we were still contemplating, an office worker had parked his bicycle outside the shop and pointed to us “おいしい” when we asked him how was the shop! Not only that, he even helped us talked to the chef and got us table seats on the 2nd floor of the shop!
We ordered a everything that was on the おでん Oden menu (except egg) and was happily drinking our Oolong Tea and eating the nut snack when we realized that the wall is full of decorations of 阪神タイガース Hanshin Tigers (a hugely popular baseball team playing in Japan’s Central League). No wonder the shop is named 琥太郎 Kotaro, haha…
The おでん oden was warm and soothing to the stomach, and we enjoyed every bits of it. So much so that we ordered three other side dishes to further warm our stomach!
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We finally tried it!!
On this not-too-particularly-hungry early evening, we figured that we could probably withstand a bit of queuing 😛 The queue started from around the corner of the shop (it’s located at the end of the building) to almost the end of the building wall when we arrived, only about 30 minutes into dinner service. The shop was very socially responsible and put up the PSI level at the start of the queue to remind customers on the haze situation.
Some time into the queue, a waiter came out and asked for the number of persons in our party, and to take our orders. We couldn’t really remember how long we took to queue for seats. Maybe around 30-45 minutes, judging from the timestamp of our photos. 🙂
Special salad: red and orange capsicum, rock melon, pear, and spring onions, with crushed peanuts, jellyfish and crab meat, a very refreshing dish that reminded us of lo hei for Lunar New Year
海皇灌汤饺 Minced Seafood Dumpling in Superior Soup ($9.50++ per pax): The dumpling was huge and skin was thin. Soup was flavourful.
鲜虾菠菜饺 Steamed Spinach Dumpling with Prawn: We loved this! Very fragrant and simple delight.
鲜虾韭菜饺 Steamed Chives Dumpling with Prawn: The dumplings were so stuck to the paper in the steamer, we were actually quite skeptical about this item. Surprisingly, the slightly thick skin was very chewy and QQ, but it did not stick to our teeth! However, the fillings were not as aromatic as we had hoped.
香芒流沙包 Steamed Bun with Salted Egg Yolk and Fresh Mango Juice ($4.80++ for 3 pieces): This was very delicious, and the salted egg yolk flavour was really distinct. We loved that it was more savoury than sweet.
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We were just walking around and sighted Pepper Steakhouse which looked promising (plus there is a One-For-One starters promotion… 🙂 hehe).
I wanted to order a lamb dish but they ran out of lamb. So we ordered:
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Woodshed Waffle
We had some time to kill before Father’s Day dinner so we wander around on FourSquare and Sugar, and landed up in Rangoon Road. This cafe is right at the end of the road, and we could easily have missed it.
The interior decor is simple but there are lots of space around since the tables were sparsely placed. That gave diners privacy and we could see some were just studying and some were reading.
Ordered a Woodshed Waffle, Iced Latte and a pot of Tea to wither our time away… Waflle was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Latte and tea were the usual stuff. We liked the serenity of the place, with soft lighting, soothing music and lots of space, both in mind and body…
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Eat.Eat.Walk.Walk . 吃吃走走 