Mini-kaiseki at Fukutei, Himeji

We rolled into Himeji around lunch time, so before going to the castle for a visit, we stopped by for lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Fukutei. As mentioned previously, we wanted to eat at this place the first time we came to Himeji but did not have the time to. This is a kaiseki restaurant, and during lunch time there are 'mini' courses to choose from which are more affordable than the full-on deal. The cheapest of these mini-kaiseki courses cost 1500 yen (~AU$15), of which (as I understood from the menu) the restaurant serves only 30 for each day. It would seem that we have a knack for choosing popular places to eat during meal time. When we arrived, we were told that there were only 3 orders left for that particular meal, so we ordered three of the 1500 yen course, and two of the 1800 yen course. There were four or five other more pricey courses on the menu, but we didn't want anything more extravagant for lunch.

The 1500 yen lunch course, which included sashimi, tempura, tsukemono (pickled vegs) and some sweet-salty anchovy-like fish. The star of the dish was obviously the beef prepared nabemono (hotpot) style but in presented in paper that was water-proof and fire-proof which my dad thought was impressive:


The 1800 yen course, included the same side dishes as the 1500 yen course as well as chawan mushi (steamed egg), somen noodles and fish chirashi (scattered rice):


The sashimi was fresh, the tempura was done quite well and wasn't greasy (I liked the pumpkin tempura) and the chawan mushi was tasty. The beef 'hotpot' was also quite nice. The fish scattered on top of the chirashi was marinated in a sweet-salty sauce of some kind and was very pleasant on the palate. It was a pretty nice experience, and even Rob's mum, the non-fish eater, came away quite satisfied.