Akihei — Restaurant in Tanabe

Solo traveler here! I had an hour until my next train at Tanabe so I decided to search a local restaurant. So when I found Akihei on Google, I was really excited to visit!

---OVERALL--- If you like good food at a great price, look no further. Located 8min away from the station, you'll not find a friendlier, tastier, and cuter place than Akihei!

See Below for More Detail

---Food--- First, the food was excellent! The food took 10min to come out which is a great start. I had a bento set containing tempura, sashimi, miso, and some other things. Everything was cooked perfectly! I believe it's only two people who own the shop so they are masters at crafting their menu items!

---Inside Vibe--- The inside of the restaurant was really nice! It has a mix of Japanese izakaya with the bar but also had a good amount of table seats for a good dine-in experience! It feels almost like a home! They had some nice plants and other decor to bring life into the space!

--Service--- By far THE BEST part! The shop owner was talking to me about my traveling experience and even gave me some brochures on several hikes in the area! She's basically trilingual so if you know Chinese, Japanese, or English, you can too have a great conversation. We managed to talk to another regular customer and she recommended cheap hotels and food...

Magic experience. We know it'll be a wonderful dinner in Akihei (based on all the reviews) but never expected to be so good. The food easily beats the Japanese food we had in Singapore and are prepared and presented super beautifully. We had sashimi platter, teriyaki beef, tempura with soba, and seasame ice-cream. Later we got to know this restaurant has been here for 150 years and now it's passed to the 5th generation and we were like - wow! That's how robust the recipes are!

Apart from the food, we had a really nice chat with the owner Kennis. She was firstly casually asking about our plan in Kumano, and then gave us helpful recommendations for the trail as she was a tour guide herself (how cool!) we didn't bring hiking poles this time, and since we will be leaving early before the shops open, she passed us 2 bamboo poles and blessed us with a safe trip. 🧡😘 How lucky we were for such an encounter and received genuine love for both our stomachs and our hearts! Ookini Kennis! Thanks for your kindness. Hope we could meet...

My family and I had two wonderful meals at this restaurant. I particularly enjoyed the sukiyaki, but everything we ordered was delicious and very affordable at that. This is one of the few restaurants in the area that have an English menu. The waitress and wife of the owner, who goes by the name of Kennis, speaks perfect English and is very kind and welcoming. She told us that the restaurant has been a family business for many generations. Apart from working at the restaurant, she's also a freelance tour guide. We ended up booking a tour with her to walk along part of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage path, visit the Hongu Taisha grand shrine and take a bath at the Yunomine onsen hot springs. She was a wealth of information and truly pleasant company the whole way. I highly recommend the experience, be it just a meal at the restaurant or a...