Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Umenohana Tofu Restaurant - Toyota City, Japan

Entrance to Umenohana at Toyota City

This weekend, we were able to visit Umenohana restaurant with our friends Mr. & Mrs. Miyano at the Toyota-City location. Umenohana means 'plum blossom' in Japanese. It is a restaurant famed for the very interesting and super creative ways that tofu and other soy products can be prepared and served.

As we sat in our own private Tatami room, tofu and it's various sub-production products such as Yuba (tofu 'skin') and Okara (soy pulp) were amazingly and deliciously used for what seems a myriad of dishes that kept coming every 10 minutes or so by a lovely kimono clad waitress.

I had been to this restaurant last year and requested that we take Ken there this year as he and I enjoy eating the Chinese dumplings from this restaurant that we can buy at a take-out location in a department store in Tokyo. I knew he would love this place!

It really is very delicious and easy on the palette, as well as pretty healthful dining. If you ever get a chance to visit one of Umenohana's locations, I highly recommend it. The link (above) brings you to their website which has a button for 'English' at the top of the page. However after I clicked on it today it takes you to a page that says in Japanese that the English page is currently under construction. Maybe it will be up in English soon. In the meantime you may still enjoy checking out the cool pictures of some of their dishes and their restaurants on the Japanese pages.

Below are photos of just SOME of the wonderful dishes served in our set-course meal on this visit (there were about 16 things served in all). You can click on the photos to enlarge if you like. Enjoy and try not to get too hungry...aloha!

Our table in the Tatami room

A sushi type roll with the Yuba (tofu skin) used on the outside of the roll. Inside is tuna and Japanese mountain potato (white parts), called Yamaimo. It is actually a yam with a sticky texture. The ceramic dish here sports a type of glazing that is famous in Mie (mee-aye) prefecture in Japan.

This is a cold kind of soup with shrimp. The shrimp is minced almost like a ground meat. It was SO good!

And here is the Tofu steamed dumpling. This is awesome!

This bamboo contraption is used to push out the blocks of Tofu served here. When the tofu is pushed through, it comes out of the bottom in 'noodle' form and is placed into the glass dish with some sauce to eat it with. One block is sitting in the bamboo gadget ready to go. Fun AND yummie!


The tofu 'noodles' after being pushed out of bottom of the bamboo gadget (seen on the right)


There were a 2 types of tofu served, this is a close up of the one that had bits of Shiso leaf in it. Very refreshing and tasty!


Tofu pudding for desert with a caramel type sauce made from toasted Soybeans

Soy/Tofu Ice Cream with soy caramel sauce and Kinako powder on top. Kinako is a kind of soy flour made from toasted Soybeans. It tastes kind of like peanut butter and is often used in the making Japanese candies.

One of the decorative 'relief' areas in the hallways of the restaurant. Each one was so different and had a fresh flower placed in it somewhere. This one had the flower in the moon hanging.

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