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The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton

Friday 20 April 2007

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.

3 comments:

  1. Heyo! I'm here because Honey told me about your blog, and wow, can I just say I really fell in love with Japanese food when I visited Japan last year. My folks and I love Japan so much that we went back twice. It's just amazing and the food -- so scrumptious and you can indulge and still feel good about it. I just cant wait to go back again! I miss hokkaido and tokyo heaps.

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  2. Hi! Thanks for reading my blog :)
    Yeah I love Japanese food too - very tasty yet so healthy! I'm quite blessed to have the opportunity to live here and experience so much of the Japanese cuisine. There are so much more variety available here.

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  3. I miss the japanese food so much :'(...

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