Gourmet Day at Beautiful Odai Town

No need to say that they were all delicious! And what about this view?! Despite the cold, eating soba with this view was just amazing! What a wonderful lunch we had.

And it was a lot of fun to experience the process of turning buckwheat flour into balls and making long soba noodles right in front of me. 

Another place on my list that I’m definitely coming back to and bringing friends and families.

Yamazato Minpaku Mikuri

After finishing our lunch, we headed to one of the many cafés in Odai Town. Today we planned to visit two of them. I heard that there are many cafes in Odaicho that have nice interiors and atmospheres and serve delicious sweets. I really like spending time at cafes, so I was looking forward to it.

The 1st café was just 5-minute walk from Yamazato Minpaku Mikuri and it’s called Wagashi Café Kanamido.


Japanese design gives me a sense of simplicity and minimalism, and Wagashi Café Kanamido is one of those places that has a modern design with a touch of the traditional architecture. The interior design was charming, comfy and warm. Kanamido café sells wagashi. Wagashi is a traditional Japanese sweet that is often served with green tea. 

My husband and I chose the “ichigo daifuku” which is a strawberry inside of a mochi. It not only looked good, but it tasted amazing as well! The owner was kind enough to offer to cut the mochi so I could take a nice picture of the interior of my wagashi. The type of wagashi that the store sells depends on the season, and also, the festive occasion. The sweetness of Japanese red bean paste and strawberries (harvested in Odai-cho) are a perfect match, and it's delicious. I have heard that Japanese sweets are made with the intention of making the person who eats them feel the season. It certainly made me feel like spring had come early.At this café, they also sell curry for lunch and apparently the curry is well-known and seems to be really good. 

Another food on my list that I have to try in the future.

Wagashi Café Kanamido.
http://houkadou.odai.or.jp/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/hokado1910_kanamido/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/kanamidooudai

The 2nd café we went to was called  Patisserie＆café Spica

Café Spica is a quite popular café in Odai town and has a unique design style. The interior was so cozy and cute. And the view?! I could’ve stayed there by the window for hours just sipping my coffee while looking out the window and appreciating this beautiful view like my husband Daniel was doing.

At Café Spica, we had a couple of options of cakes that we could choose from. We chose chocolate cake, Foret Noire (I’m not sure it’s spelled correctly) and Caramel mou. The cakes were all fluffy and the taste was light and delicious. As you know, Spica was the fourth place to eat and drink that day, but it was very easy to eat, and all three of us finished eating the cake. 

Eating Café Spica cakes reminded me of something that had changed in me after living in Japan for so many years, my taste. When I first came to Japan, I didn’t like the Japanese sweets and cakes at all. Compared to Brazilian sweets, I felt like Japanese sweets had no sugar. Over time, my taste has drastically changed. Now, I love Japanese sweets and I think Brazilian sweets are too sweet. Sometimes I need water while eating a Brazilian sweet.

Café Spica also sells cookies, in fact, this café is popular during valentine’s day and white day, customers can choose from these cute varieties of cookies .We also bought some cookies as souvenirs for our family who didn't come with us that day.

Patisserie＆café Spica

0598-76-1434

instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/morinookashiya_spica

facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/spica.forest/

For our last destination of the day, we left the beautiful countryside and headed to the center of Odai town. 

Montmartre Kameya is a shop that sells handmade traditional Japanese sweets. Once we entered the shop, it was possible to see the space with all the machineries used to make the sweets and cakes. They also sell sweets made with green tea produced in Odai town, such as tea pound cakes and Odai tea crepe. 

Odai tea crepe seems to be quite popular among foreigners, so we decided to purchase some for ourselves. 
Food made of Japanese tea usually has no sweet taste, just the taste of tea, but this crepe had whip cream inside, so it made it taste like sweet Japanese tea. I think that the color and taste of Japanese tea sweets are unique to Japan, but I think it's a new kind of sweetness for foreigners, so I can understand why it's popular with foreigners. 

Montmartre Kameya
https://web-odai.info/cafe/cafe-5578.html

The great thing about towns like Odai is that they value and support the products grown and produced in their own town, meaning, most of the food we ate was prepared using ingredients from Odai town. 

I was glad to be given the opportunity to go to this part of Odai town. The people we met were kind and friendly and all of them welcomed us with a big smile on their faces. I’m pretty sure the beautiful nature plays a big role on people’s mood, it sure did on mine, the entire time I was there. 

What I really loved about this day was not only learning the value of the food that people in Ōdai town make with their passion for what they do but also learning the importance of the food we ate by making it. And letting our son experience it was gratifying. At home, I heard him telling his friends about his day and how exciting it was to make soba.