Kushiya Monogatari - Kagura Syokudo

The next restaurant we went to was right in the middle of the Dōtonbori area (near the giant crab) and on the 9th floor, meaning that from our seat we got a great view of, well, the tops of the other tall buildings across the street. Some confusion about what the name where we were actually was - different sites have slightly different variations. The name seems to be Kushiya Monogatari (串家物語, and sometimes with 神楽食堂), from which monogatari (物語) means story and kushiya (串家) is in reference to its food being kushiage - fried things on sticks, is a popular specialty of the Osaka region! It is a national chain of deep fried skewers buffet restaurant.


The poster for their 'Winter sensation fair' outside of the restaurant gave an idea of what to expect. Although it's clearly not catered for vegetarians, there were quite a lot of veggies-on-sticks on offer here. And while the staff's English didn't seem that extensive the tables helpfully had cards explaining the idea of the restaurant in various languages:



For some reason 'please put only sticks in the fryer' made us giggle! Anyway, the all-you-can-fry buffet provided a wide selection of ready-prepared sticks on cooled shelfs, including lots of different types of raw vegetables and a couple of different cheeses. We picked up a bunch of said sticks, brought them to the table, dipped them in the liquid batter and breadcrumbs and then put them in the fryer. There was a ninety minute time limit but if you can eat fried sticks (and a selection of other cooked choices, although these mainly were't vegetarian; we did have some salad and plain udon) for more than an hour even you either go very slowly or have a much bigger appetite than us.

This dining experience lent itself well to lots of pictures... All set up and ready to go.



A couple of sticks in the fryer at our table...



It took a couple of goes to get the hang of how much to put on and how long to leave them in so as not to end up with too thick/fried a layer of batter. Then part of the fun was juggling eating and frying so as to get it right and not leave any waiting time. There were a wide variety of condiments and sauces for you to choose and mix to compliment your fried items.

Finished sticks (lotus root and konnyaku) and uncooked sticks (pumpkin, button mushroom, aubergine, onion, pepper and bread):



After a while...



Yes, I really did get through that many sticks myself! Went back for more a couple of times, with the different types of mushrooms, cheese and konnyaku were particular favourites.

There were even a selection of desserts and fruits to choose from afterwards if you could somehow still manage it. Sight of a piece of mostly eaten waffle, chocolate cake and think pancake shown below; ihascupcake had some coffee flavoured grass jelly. We also had some oranges for good measure.



Finally, after we were all finished, the resulting carnage:



Eating this food all the time would surely be a quick route to heart disease even if you don't have to worry about your waistline, but as a one off it was great fun as well as tasty. At ￥2,625 it was not the cheapest thing we had but when you look at the number of sticks we got through it was actually great value too, even if we hadn't been lucky enough to be given discount vouchers in the lift on the way up. You can also add all-you-can drink for an additional ￥1,050, so might be a good place for a fun evening with friends.


Kushiya Monogatari (Dōtonbori branch)
〒542-0071大阪府大阪市中央区道頓堀1-6-15　ﾄﾞｳﾄﾝﾋﾞﾙ 9F
TEL/FAX：06-6214-5494

Akoya Chaya

After visiting the famous Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, we walked back down the hill along the stone-paved Ninenzaka towards Kodai-ji and stopped for some lunch at Akoya Chaya (阿古屋茶屋).

Chaya means teahouse, but while there was some tea on offer, the main attraction was the unlimited buffet of around 25 different kyo-tsukemono/Kyoto pickled vegetables (京漬物), another of Kyoto's specialities which is served with rice and is a popular souvenir for Japanese from other areas (we tried some in a kyo-tsukemono shop earlier on Ninenzaka). The selection here was almost entirely vegetables; there were a couple of small dried fish things but these were easy enough to spot and avoid!



I think you could order a la carte options, but most of the customers seemed to have got the buffet option (¥1,250). We placed our order with one of the servers, and prompty we were each presented with a tray with miso soup, cold tofu, an empty bowl and an empty plate. The empty plate and bowl were for the unlimited pickles and rice (we got options of white rice, rice porridge and, I think, sweet potato rice). With such a bewildering array of options of pickled vegetables, the only sensible way to go about it really was to take a little bit of everything and try it out, then work out which to go back for more of. The juicy aubergine was probably the best one. To be honest, we weren't quite sure what some of the vegetables were, but most were nice and interesting enough as far as pickled vegetables goes. Pickled vegetables alone as a meal is an odd idea, but the strong taste went nicely with white rice or white rice porridge so it was quite a good value meal together.

This was probably one of the more 'interesting' or 'unsual' meal we made in Japan, since we probably never thought of having a pickled vegetable meal/buffet before. We only came across this restaurant in some Chinese (think Taiwanese) website when doing our pre-trip research. We can't seem to be able find any English websites giving any reviews or information. We certainly didn't see any foreign tourists (or not that we could tell) there; other customers included young adults, families, middle age couples - a variety of clientele. The restaurant was certainly at a great location for East Kyoto temple/shinto sightseeing and a (almost) fool proof Kyoto special vegetarian option (watch out for the fact that it closes at 5pm though!)

阿古屋茶屋 Akoya-chaya
京都府京都市東山区清水3-343
Tel：075-531-0056

Tabasa Pasta Viking

Our second Viking buffet experience (after It's Vegetable) was at Tabasa at the bottom of the hill end of Takeshita-dori in Harajuku. The plastic models give a good idea of what was on offer; there were a couple of suitable salad & pasta dishes and we were lucky enough that there was also mushroom/tomato pizza out for most of the time we were there. The different prices seen in the photo depended on whether you were a man (¥1155) or woman (¥1050), although I'm not completely sure I ate that much more to justify the extra. There was also an option including all you can drink beer, but we thought it was a bit pricey and wouldn't get our money worth.

The highlight was definitely the fact that desserts were also on an all you can eat basis (there was a one hour time limit for everything) - green tea ice cream and red bean pancakes were enough to make me wish I left more room for them.



Overall all it was an alright experience, a good place to avoid the pouring rain since we didn't feel like walking around and getting more wet! It was also slightly amusing with all the American hip-hop/rap memorabilia decorating the restaurant - we had a video screen showing the same types of videos right above us on the wall and huge Eminem and 50 Cent posters behind us.


Tabasa
B1F, 1-8-3 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
東京都渋谷区神宮前1-8-3 石川ビルB1F
Tel: 03-3404-3740.