Tsuruya Shokudo — Restaurant in Miyazu

Purple soba! Red udon! Great options. Locally sourced seafood and ingredients. All right near Amanohashidate. Of course I'm giving it 5-stars.

I love this restaurant. This region is famous throughout Japan for seafood, and Tsuruya has great options ranging from local sardines, to a seafood rice bowl packed with local seafood, and even Ine Yellowtail served shabu-shabu style (which can be really expensive). But for all that seafood, Tsuruya Shokudo also has a good balance, because sometimes you just don't want seafood, especially when it's everywhere. This restaurant also has two really unique noodle dishes, a red udon made with ancient red rice, and purple soba. I love soba, but I also really like sardines, and as luck would have it the sardine rice bowl was served with a small side of soba and miso soup to boot. I think it was around 1500 yen, which is a little higher than I would usually like to pay for lunch, but considering the amount of food, the uniqueness of the food, and that a lot of it is local, I was quite happy.

I should also mention that the person I was with is vegan, and they were so accommodating that they even made miso soup using kombu stock instead of fish stock.

I didn't even talk about the location. This restaurant is right between Moto Ise Kono Shrine and the Kasamatsu Park cable car, on a really cute street with different shops. It's a 3.6 km walk from Amanohashidate Station across one of the three most scenic views in Japan where no cars are allowed. Just gorgeous.

I should have taken more pictures but I was just so excited to...

It rained heavily when we visited Amanohashidate. Must say meal was one of the highlights of that trip. I don't even know the name of this dish in English but would recommend to order this dish if you ever decide to dine in this place. The sashimi were decent and the egg when mixed together with everything - it was good. The Amazake is interesting - felt like it's something rather localised. Wish the alcohol taste/ content is higher. Also I like the environment where it was quite cozy and met a couple of friendly Japanese older ladies. Somehow the owner allowed us 3 to split our bills to pay separately. Which is something...

It was unfortunate that the staff didn't seem welcoming. We were looking for lunch at 11.30, hoping we would not meet the lunch crowd. There was no queue. Upon entering, the lady was saying we would have to wait for a long while, do we want to wait? A really strange question, so when I asked how long, she said 30 minutes. I expected the restaurant to be fully packed but there were 2 groups who finished their meals and left in 10 minutes. Lunch was ok, I would have preferred to bring the chikuwa up the cable car and have burger upstairs instead to enjoy the view of...