About food in Japan

Lunch spot in Kawagoe, Kasho Umon tea room

As a part of our blog series for Kawagoe (川越), today we picked up a recommendable lunch spot in the old town of Kawagoe.

On the main street of “Kurazukuri” town, you will find some restaurant choices from soba noodle to Western cuisine. Local specialty to try in Kawagoe is “sweet potato” and it will be served not only as sweets but also as an ingredient in meal.

Today’s feature, Kasho Umon Sabo (tea room)/菓匠　右門 provides a typical local cuisine dish, "cooked rice with sweet potato"(芋おこわ, imo okowa).

Kasho Umon tea room is situated south of Kurazukuri town(old town of Kawagoe) along the main street. It is facing to a large car parking and on the ground floor, Kasho Umon’s main products, traditional Japanese sweets, are offered at the front part. The tea room exist behind the sweet shop and it stretches to the upper floor.

 

The sweet shop’s upper floor is totally in Japanese traditional style where we need to take our shoes off and to sit on tatami mats.

 

From the window side table, view of the vital main street is available.

 

Cooked rice with sweet potato is served in a black basket with side dishes in a square box.

 

Here the cooked rice is called “Okowa”(おこわ). In general, okowa is also known as “Sekihan”(赤飯, cooked rice with red beans), which we take on celebratory occasions. For Okowa or Sekihan, instead of ordinary one, rice specialized for mochi (rice cake) is used as ingredient. So the cooked rice served as Okowa is stickier than normal cooked rice. In most cases, like sweet potato here, vegetable, bean or any other ingredient is cooked with rice for Okowa.

 

 

It offers 3 lunch set menus with the cooked rice depending on side dishes.

 

As dessert, if you would, you can order some of sweets available at the sweets shop on the ground floor. Of course, even without lunch, you can enjoy them for a tea time break.

 

Spend a calm lunch break during sightseeing in Kawagoe old town.

 

Shop name: Kasho Umon Sabo (菓匠　右門 茶房)

Official website (Japanese version only)

Sweet shop and company information:http://www.imokoi.com/index.html

Sabo (tea room): http://www.imokoi.com/sabo.html

Address: 1-6 Saiwai-cho, Kawagoe-city, Saitama

 

Kashiya Yokocho (菓子屋横丁) must-visit spot for food lovers in Kawagoe

Following our last post, here we put the second post on the series of Kawagoe (川越). For general tourist information about Kawagoe, an old town near Tokyo. Please check our first post from link HERE.

Today we introduce a small area in the old town. It is called “Kashiya Yokocho”(菓子屋横丁). Some of you could recognize the name can be very attractive for food lovers.

Kashiya(菓子屋) represents a sweets shop in Japanese and Yokocho(横丁) indicates narrow streets in dense area. So it is exactly an area where not a few sweet shops stand along a narrow street!! It means the place we should never miss it, when we visit the old town.

Well, Kashiya Yokocho is situated north side of the old town called “Kurazukuri” zone. If you have a tourist map of Kawagoe, the area will be on upper-left side. From the town’s main street, it is a few minutes walk. The narrow street stretches in “L” shape like a line connecting two main streets on the old town.

Many small boutiques exist along the street and most of them are selling sweets, specifically traditional Japanese products such as colorful candy, rice crackers and snacks made from sweet potato. They have each different sweets products shop by shop. It will be fun to walk along the street, while checking their products each by each.

 

 

The street can be filled with tourists.

 Many shops are quite open to tourists and you will find price tags for each. Even not, most of sweets products are offered at quite reasonable prices unlike ones at department stores.

 

What to get at Kashiya Yokocho is “fried sweet potato” made from the most famous local specialty in Kawagoe. It looks like ordinary “fried potato” but sweets and harder. You can find a mountain of fried sweets potato at each sweet shop there. The rustic sweets made from sweet potato must be healthy refreshment on afternoon etc.

 

**********   UPDATE 27 June 2015   *************

A fire broke out from one of these sweets shops around noon on 21st June 2015.

Unfortunately the life of a shop master(age 90) was lost and 5 houses were burned down.

However from 26th June, almost of all shops in the area re-opened and the operation has got back to normal, apart from the five buildings burned.

No other facility is affected on this incident.

**************************************************************************

 

Related post: Kawagoe(川越), an old town easily accessible from Tokyo