Mein Schloss - Craft brewery & Beer hall restaurant

As I wrote before in this blog, I can’t drink alcohol. On the contrary, my sister loves drinking and has never got drunken. Since she will soon hit the big ?-oh, I wanted to send something special for her birthday. So, I went to Mein Schloss (My Castle) near JR Hamamatsu Station.

Mein Schloss is a beer hall restaurant with a brewery and a courtyard. I have once had a pizza that was like Pizza Margherita in the restaurant. The interior and atmosphere were very much like those in German beer halls I had seen on TV and more impressive than the pizza itself. Other people were eating sausages that also looked very German. You can feel as if you were in Germany. Under this corona period, the restaurant seems to take more strict measures than other places in Hamamatsu. They take customers’ temperatures and request customers to wear a mask when they walk around in the building.

This time, I just visited their shop on the left to buy the present. Behind the counter, there was a series of beer. I chose a set of four types of beer Schwarz, Alt, Helles, and Weisen. They were made in the brewery of Mein Schloss and labeled as “HAMAMATSU BEER.” According to the website, their products are made according to German Reinheitsgebot (purity order). This law was originally established by Wilhelm IV in Bavaria in 1516 and limited the ingredients of beer to just water, barley, and hops (yeast was added later). It is interesting to know that all these different types of beer are made from the same simple ingredients.

The shop of Mein Schloss has also some food from abroad such as pickles, cookies and gummi candies and souvenirs of Hamamatsu. I bought bottles of cucumber pickles and olives home.

In addition, I found some beautiful Christmas ornaments from Germany. It was funny to see snowmen in the middle of summer.

These wooden ornaments somehow reminded me of German bread Brezel. You can eat one in the restaurant.

In the Christmas season, the courtyard will have gorgeous illumination at night. Even in summer, it was nice to see with parasols and flowers.

Now it is almost impossible to go overseas because of covid-19. But even if you are in Hamamatsu, you can see something German in Mein Schloss, and there is also Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments that presents musical instruments from all over the world. It is just a few minutes walk from Mein Schloss.

Yesterday, my sister sent me a mail to inform that she received the beer. She said she would have it for dinner with steak and tortilla chips. I wished I could drink beer because tortilla chips surely go well with beer and the temperature was 40 degrees here, which I had never experienced before.

Mein Schloss
Address:  8-1 Chuo 3-chome, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka
Tel: 053-452-1146
Opening hours: Weekdays 11:00 - 14:30, 17:00 - 23:00
                       Saturday 11:00 - 23:00
                       Sunday and holidays 11:00 - 22:00
Closed: Monday, December 31 and January 1
Access: 8-minute walk from JR Hamamatsu Station

“Staff Canteen” in Act City

Act City is a landmark of Hamamatsu located adjacent to the train station. It is a group of facilities including Main Hall, Concert Hall, Congress Center, Act Tower, Exhibition and Event Hall, etc. Act Tower is the highest building of the city with a height of 212m. It consists of Act Plaza with restaurants, offices, Okura Act City Hotel Hamamatsu, and Observatory Gallery. There seems to be quite many people working in this building.

On the second floor of Act Tower, there is a restaurant named “Act Shain Shokudo 3-Chome (アクト社員食堂3丁目).” Shain shokudo means a staff canteen, and chome is a unit of address. Despite of its name, the restaurant welcomes everyone, not only those working in the building but also people from outside. Like a real staff canteen, it is a self-service restaurant.

The menu items are Japanese home-style dishes. On the wall outside the restaurant, there was a poster presenting small dishes that cost only 110 yen. The one in the center with tomato slices looked delicious, and I entered the restaurant with some expectation.

Near the entrance, there were sauce and dressing, as well as interesting objects such as the mascot Peko-chan of Fujiya, a popular confectionery company, two river imps called kappa, and a photo of sunset. I thought "3-Chome" of the restaurant name might have come from a Japanese film "Always: Sunset on Third Street (Always Sanchomeno Yuhi)" that depicted people’s lives in Tokyo in 1950’s. It was a nostalgic film and won great popularity.

Since it was a little over 11:00 on Saturday, there were only a few customers inside. I took a tray, half-split chopsticks, and a paper napkin and checked the dishes in cases. Each dish was covered with plastic wrap, and the staff wore masks. I asked one of them about the dish with tomato slices that I saw outside. Unfortunately, the dressing was not animal-free.

I could have four vegan menu items. Since It was Saturday, there were less rice ball options than on weekdays. I chose the one with a pickled plum. Though it wasn’t covered with dried laver, it was tasty with sesame sprinkled on it. The dish on the right of the rice ball is deep-fried tofu. When I brought the tray to the cashier, one of the staff members was going to pour sauce on this tofu. I stopped her immediately because the sauce was very likely to contain dried bonito broth. In supermarkets, deep-fried tofu like this is always flavored with such sauce. What a relief that the sauce was not added from the beginning this time! I ate it with soy sauce on the table. It was warm and seemed to be freshly fried.

The other two were pickles and salad. The pickles were nukazuke or vegetables pickled in salted rice-bran paste. Nukazuke is a common type of pickles, and this dish was not very special. But the salad contains 10 ingredients including lettuce, purple onion, cucumber, corn, green soybeans, paprika, etc. For salad, there were four types of dressing: French, yuzu soy sauce, sesame, and green perilla non-oil dressing. I wasn’t sure if they were animal-free, so I added a little soy sauce to the salad. In Japanese restaurant, vegans have to be always careful about sauce and dressing. The salad itself was satisfactory with a variety of vegetables.

Unlike a real staff canteen, this restaurant has some alcohol beverages. I had a cup of free cold green tea during the lunch and hot green tea after finishing it.

The restaurant was cozy. Even though it was Saturday, some groups of people including families with children came while I was eating. They got dishes to go. Near the pillar, there was a microwave oven so that customers can warm up their dishes. I wondered how crowded this restaurant could be on weekdays. This time, the total of the four dishes I had was 539 yen. It may be a little more expensive than a real staff canteen but was quite reasonable.

Act Shain Shokudo 3-Chome
Address: 111-2 Itaya-machi, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka Prefecture
Tel: 053-453-1833
Opening hours: 11:00 - 15:00
Closed: Sundays

Kanshirou - Restaurant run by tofu shop

Last Sunday, my mother took me for a drive. This time, we went to Kanshirou (勘四郎), a restaurant specialized in dishes with tofu and other soy products. It is run by a tofu shop Sube Shoten (須部商店) . They have produced tofu for 140 years by using natural ground water in Miyakoda in Kita-ku (North Ward) of Hamamatsu. The restaurant is situated in the rural area near mountains.

As Kanshirou is a popular restaurant, we made a reservation before we left. Until the restaurant was opened at 11:30, we looked around in the store in the same house. They were selling a variety of soy products in addition to this regular tofu seen in many supermarkets in Hamamatsu.

We got interested in these soymilk doughnuts. They are ovo-vegetarian as they contain egg powder. Each bag contained three doughnuts, so I bought one to share with my parents. It looked and tasted delicious.

Another interesting product was tofu croquettes. Croquettes (called “korokke” in Japanese) are sold any supermarket in Japan, but it is very difficult to find vegetarian/vegan ones. According to the description, these tofu croquettes don’t contain meat and egg. The main ingredients are tofu, plant oil, onion, carrot, dried mashed potato, breadcrumbs, granular soybean protein, sugar, salt, etc. They almost seemed to be vegan.

I bought a pack with two croquettes and ate them for dinners. The inside looked like this. They were fluffy with tofu, which may be a little different from croquettes sold in supermarkets.

The store also had tofu skins,

snacks such as soy pulp crackers,

black soybean tea, etc.

These are only a few examples. There were so many interesting foods that I felt like coming again on some other day. The store wasn’t very big and was crowded with people who waited for the restaurant to be opened. At 11:30, each group was told which table they should sit at. Luckily, we could go upstairs as my mother expected.

As soon as we came to the second floor, we noticed that the restaurant limited the number of customers to keep social distance. We saw only two other groups sitting distant from our table. And my mother and I could keep a distance from each other thanks to a big table between us.

Since there was no one by the window,

I could come closer and see rice fields outside.

This was my first time to eat out since the beginning of March, and I was glad that the staff was very careful to avoid a crowd inside the restaurant. It felt spacious and relaxing. As this building was a renovated old Japanese-style house, thick wood was used for the ceiling. Unfortunately, only moon-like lights can be seen in this picture.

Under this corona period, menu was limited to four items. My mother and I ordered “Fresh Yosedofu Set” and “Fresh Deep-fried Tofu Set” respectively. Yosedofu is a kind of tofu that is not formed in a mold to be pressed. I got some of it from my mother. It looked like, and I ate it with sauce, ground sesame, and green onion. Fresh yosedofu was warm and much softer than ordinary square tofu.

And this is my “Fresh Deep-fried Tofu Set.” As side dishes, there were chilled tofu, miso soup, and cooked vegetables.

The main dish was neatly arranged deep-fried tofu. I gave some pieces to my mother. This tofu was supposed to be eaten with sauce, soy sauce rice malt, ginger, and grated daikon radish. Though I often have similar dish at home, this fresh deep-fried tofu felt less oily outside and tasted much better.

Though chilled tofu was just a side dish, it was impressive. It seemed that the green onion sauce contained sesame oil, and I liked such a flavor. After eating soft warm yosedofu, this cold and harder tofu felt different from usual.

This is 16-grain rice, which has been winning popularity in recent years. We could choose between white rice and 16-grain rice, and both of us chose this.

In fact, I can’t remember how the rice tasted because the volume of the tofu dishes was over whelming. Even the miso soup and cooked vegetables contained deep-fried tofu. When I finished, I said to my mother that I wouldn’t need to eat any tofu products throughout the next week.

Finally, we had the dessert and tea that were also included in the set. The dessert was tofu mousse with green tea flavor, and the tea was soy pulp tea. I liked the smooth texture of the dessert and brown sugar syrup on it.

I think Kanshirou’s tofu products are recommendable to vegans and vegetarians. But I have to point out one thing. According to their website, they use broth made from “bonito and other fish” and “kelp” for everything. I suppose this “everything” includes every sauce. When I ate at Kanshirou, I thought fish broth might be used for miso soup and cooked vegetables as in other restaurants but thought somehow that sauces for tofu dishes were animal-free. It may be because I’m used to eating them with soy sauce at home. It’s embarrassing.

This time, the options were limited. But usually they have a menu item “Soy Pulp Pizza with Seasonal Vegetables” that seem to be vegan. It is said clearly on the website that egg, wheat flour, milk, and meat are not used. The ingredients are tofu, soy pulp, corn starch, olive oil, tomato miso, salt, and seasonal vegetables. I have never had such a pizza crust made from tofu, soy pulp, etc. When this corona period is over and normal menu is available, I’d like to try this pizza.

Kanshirou
Address: 5531 Miyakoda-cho, Kita-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka
Tel: 053-428-7667
Opening hours (as of June 30, 2020): 10:00 – 15:00
                                                Lunch: 11:30 - 13:30 (LO)
Closed: Thursdays

Japanese tea time at Saryo Itoen

The other day, I heard that many tourists from abroad have difficulty finding a café where they can drink Japanese tea. I had never thought of that before as Shizuoka Prefecture is a big production area of tea and we daily drink our tea, especially middle-grade green tea, at home and working places. It may be difficult to find Japanese tea on the menu of an ordinary western-style café, however, there are also Japanese style cafés where you can eat traditional sweets with Japanese tea. They are called “amamidokoro” or “kanmidokoro” (there are two ways to read Chinese characters 甘味処). I can’t remember if there are any such cafés in the downtown, but there is a convenient place to drink tea near JR Hamamatsu Station. It is Saryo Itoen in the basement of the main building of Entetsu Department Store.

Itoen is a shop selling tea leaves, and Saryo Itoen is its eating area. They have a variety of tea, soft-serve ice cream and some Japanese sweets in their menu. The food samples looked delicious!

Among the sweets, there are two vegan options: Shiratama Zenzai and Matcha Shiratama Zentzai. Shiratama Zenzai is adzuki bean soup with rice flour dumplings. When I went there today, I chose the one with matcha or powdered green tea. It didn’t take long before it was served.

In fact, I was disappointed to see this because it looked very different from the food sample. After stirring it with the spoon, however, I found many adzuki beans hidden under the surface.

The adzuki bean soup is hot and the dumplings melted in my mouth. As it was very sweet, I couldn’t feel the taste of tea very well. However, I thought it very good to have when you are tired or on a cold day. When I ate it up, I felt slight bitterness of powdered green tea. It was surely different from ordinary adzuki soup.

As zenzai was so sweet, I felt like drinking tea additionally. I went to the counter again and ordered hot hojicha or roasted green tea. As for tea, you can choose hot or cold tea. When it was served, I felt the excellent aroma of the tea immediately. This is one of the reasons why I like roasted green tea.

It had a mild flavor. I noticed that it wasn’t too hot and easy to drink. Maybe they control its temperature carefully to extract its flavor well. I was very impressed by that. By using this tea, they provide a seasonal menu item Hojicha Shiruko or adzuki bean soup with roasted green tea. Both hojicha and adzuki beans have an effect to warm up you body. I think I’ll come back on a cold day in December.

Now is the season of autumn leaves, and Itoen has other seasonal products such as green tea flavored with yuzu, a citrus fruit that also warm up your body. There were also chocolate flavored three kinds of tea and wasanbon or Japanese refined sugar.

Regardless the season, deep-steamed green tea in Shizuoka Prefecture is a popular product, I guess.

In addition to Itoen, there are some other places in the department store and the train station where local tea leaves are sold. Some shops let you taste tea.

This is the 200th article of this blog. At first, I didn’t intend to continue so long, but I found it interesting to introduce our local products and traditional food and enjoyed writing. Now, I’ll take a rest for a while. I’m not sure if I'll restart writing or not. I’d like to thank you all and hope you will enjoy your stay in Hamamatsu if you live in/have a chance to come to Hamamatsu.

Miteri - Convenient Indian-Nepalese restaurant near Washizu Station

Before I went to Sakichi Toyoda Memorial House last Saturday, I had lunch at Indian-Nepalese Restaurant Miteri located only a few minutes walk from Washizu Station. It was on the second floor of a building,

and they had stairs outside.

During the lunch time, the restaurant provided two set menu items suitable for vegetarians: Mix Vegetable Curry and Dal Curry. I chose Dal Curry. As you can choose between naan bread and rice, I chose rice because I thought it went better with bean curry than naan bread. For drink, there were many options including Mango Lassi and Rose Lassi that provoked my curiosity. However, I chose chai as I always do in Indian restaurants.

While waiting, I saw weather forecast on TV installed at a high place near the entrance. It was rather unusual for an Indian restaurant to have one though it may be welcomed by some customers. The restaurant provided free Wi-Fi as well and many takeout menu items. I wanted to have pakora and samosa for dinner at home but gave them up as I was on my way to Sakichi Toyoda’s birthplace.

After a while, salad was served. It was made of cabbage, lettuce, carrot and corn. The dressing contained sesame.

This is Dal Curry. Unlike bean curry I had seen before in other restaurants, it had chopped green onion and a spiral on top. Bean curry and its name seemed to have variations depending on restaurants. In this blog, I use the name and spelling written on the menu of each restaurant. In most cases, the menu items of Indian restaurants are written both in Japanese and English.

The hotness of the curry was selectable from 0 to 5, and I chose 3. It was medium hot, but I felt soon that my body was warmed up. Though the weather was cool enough to wear a long-sleeved shirt, I began to sweat. The curry was so appetizing that I asked for a second helping of rice. They provided free refills of naan bread and rice, and many people asked for them.

Then I had chai. Chai in Indian restaurants is often served with stick sugar, but I don’t usually use it. I remembered sweet chai in the South Indian restaurant in Nagoya and wondered if it’s better to put sugar in chai. However, I drank it as it was. It was good even without sugar.

When I left the restaurant, they asked me if I wanted to have a stamp card. If I had lived in Kosai, I would have answered “Yes” to come there repeatedly. Their service was very good.

Miteri was not only near the station but also Lake Hamana. After visiting Sakichi Toyoda Memorial House, I dropped in a second-hand book chain BOOK OFF on my way back to the station and then got lost for a while. When I came back, the weather had become fine. I enjoyed the view of the lake before I returned to Hamamatsu.

Indian-Nepalese Restaurant Miteri
Address: KANEKI Building 2F, 529-3 Washizu, Kosai-shi, Shizuoka
Tel: 053-575-1112
Open hours: 11:00 - 15:00
            17:00 - 22:00
Closed: Mondays

Holiday in Nagoya (3) - South Indian restaurant ERICK SOUTH

From Futaba Museum, I walked to Takaoka Station and took a subway (Sakura-dori Line of Nagoya Municipal Subway) to Nagoya Station. I had been looking forward to having a lunch in Nagoya because there is a south Indian restaurant near the station. In Japan, there are many Indian restaurants, so it isn’t difficult to find one in provincial cities like Hamamatsu. But most of them serve north Indian dishes, featuring big naan bread. You can find south Indian restaurants only in big cities including Nagoya.

The restaurant ERICK SOUTH was easy to find. It was in the basement of KITTE NAGOYA, a shopping mall that was 5-minute walk from the station. When I got there, I saw about ten people waiting in front of the restaurant to be seated though it was around 13:30. It seemed to be very popular. After a while, I was guided to a long table and could have a seat. Their menu was very convenient for vegetarians because ERICK SOUTH uses the Indian vegetarian mark (a green circle in a green square) to distinguish vegetarian dishes from other dishes. I ordered Veg Meals with full of expectation.

The menu items were also written in English. While waiting, I read the menu carefully and found that Veg Meals can be changed to be a vegan version with an extra charge. If I have another chance to come there, I’d like to try the vegan version. But it was still exciting to have a standard Veg meals as I had seldom eaten south Indian dishes. It looked gorgeous! It included turmeric rice, coconut curry, Aloo Baigun, Daal Tarka, sambar, rasam, yogurt, vada, upma, coconut chutney, papad,

and Basmati rice under papad.

Like me, many Japanese people who aren’t familiarized with meals would be surprised to see this variety of dishes and wonder what they are. So, the restaurant had a sheet on every table to provide the names and description of respective dishes and explain how to eat meals.

I started with papad. According to the explanation, it was made from ground beans. I broke it in some pieces and ate as they were. Papad was crispy and reminded me of potato chips. But it wasn’t oily at all and seemed to be much healthier. It was a little salty and seemed to be good for snack.

Then I tasted the coconut curry. Though it is my favorite kind of curry, I had eaten it only in a Sri Lanka restaurant (it is also in Nagoya). As I had expected, it was mild and very good. Though the instruction recommended mixing curry and rice on the tray, I ate curry and rice separately just because I wanted to taste them separately. Basmati rice was served with some chickpea powder on top. On the table there were pickles and chickpea powder in cans so that customers could add them freely to their dishes. According to the menu, Aloo Baigun and Daal Tarka were the vegetarian dishes of the day. Aloo Baigun was thick curry with eggplant and potatoes. Daal Tarka contained four beans boiled to a pulp. Like other bean curry I had eaten before, this Daal Tarka was very tasty. I noticed that we seldom use multiple kinds of beans together in traditional Japanese dishes. Why?

Sambar and rasam are soup. According to the explanation, sambar contains toor dal and vegetables, and rasam is spicy soup with flavors of tamarind and black pepper. As both of them were red, they looked very hot. Actually, they were quite spicy, but I was very glad to eat them. Several years ago, I traveled to North India. Then I had a lunch in a South Indian restaurant in Agra and ate these soups with rice. They had strong but good tastes and somehow reminded me of rice and miso soup that is the basic combination in a traditional home cooked meal in Japan. It was one of my most impressive experiences in India.

Vada is a kind of doughnut made from urad dal. In fact, I couldn’t remember exactly how it tasted because of the stronger flavor of coconut chutney. I liked it very much. This sauce was also on upma made from rough-ground wheat flour mixed with vegetables and spices. It had an elastic interesting texture.

The restaurant provides free refills of sambar, rasam, and the two kinds of rice, but I was quite full when I finished the meals. Sambar and rasam were so spicy that my lips and inside of my mouth were tingling even after eating sour yogurt and drinking water. So, I ordered Navratan Kulfi and chai to mitigate tingling.

The taste of chai varies greatly depending on restaurants. This chai was relatively sweet. Navratan Kulfi was a dessert made from strained yogurt, dried fruits, and chocolate. It was frozen and difficult to cut with the fork but very delicious! (However, I noticed later that Navratan Kulfi on the menu didn’t have a vegetarian mark. Staff members in the restaurant seemed to be very busy so I couldn’t ask them why)

When I left ERICK SOUTH, there was no one who was waiting outside to have a seat. So, I could take a picture of the restaurant finally. I hope we can have this kind of restaurant in Hamamatsu someday.

ERICK SOUTH
Address: B1F, JP Tower Nagoya (KITTE NAGOYA), 1-1-1 Meieki, Nakamura-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi
Tel: 052-433-1780
Open hours: 11:00 - 23:00
Closed: According to KITTE NAGOYA