Kimoyaki – YummyDelight

Other than wanting to eat Hakata ramen in Fukuoka, the other specialty which was high on our To-Eat list was Unagi. We shortlisted a restaurant in Yanagawa which was about 1 hour train ride away from Hakata. As we didn’t make the effort to secure a reservation during the Golden Week holiday, we did not want to make a wasted trip there. Instead we opted to try the Yoshizuka Unagi which was conveniently located within the Hakata city.

The first thing that surprised me was the scale of the restaurant. I was pretty surprised that the restaurant is housed in a 3-storey building on its own! When we entered the lobby it was filled with guests seemingly waiting for their turn. As we walked up the staircase, it was lined with more waiting crowd. When we finally reached the reception area of the restaurant, the waitlist displayed an estimated waiting time of 45 mins. The wait was not too surprising as we had previously queued 1.5 hours for an unagi meal in Kyoto (see post) during peak Sakura season.

As this place was located right next to the Hakata river, one can take a leisure stroll along it or cross over for some shopping at the Kawabata Shopping Arcade while passing time.

About 1 hour later, our name was called and we were led into the spacious dining hall. I was impressed that each table are well-spaced out and the restaurant didn’t squeeze more tables to maximise the floor space. In fact we were given a large table, which can seat 4 pax, right next to the window.

English menu with pictures was available, making it a breeze to place our order. We need not wait long for our orders to be served.

We started our meal with appetizer of Kimoyaki (grilled eel liver) and a Chawanmushi (egg custard). The perfectly grilled eel liver basted with the tare sauce offered a sneak preview of the main unagi course to come.

Here’s my Deluxe Kabayaki box (5 pieces of unagi) with rice and soup. They provide extra sauce on a side plate for dipping. The meat was firm and juicy. Each piece of the unagi had a nice crisp on the surface along with a slight smoky aroma from the charcoal-grill. Immediately I regretted not ordering the 6 pieces box instead!!

The picky eater ordered the Makunouchi set comprising of a variety of other smaller dishes in order to avoid being overwhelmed by unagi. Guess what…he regretted his choice too! The unagi was so tasty that two miserable pieces were not enough…I offered one of mine to him…

I shared about the difference between Kansai style unagi and Kanto style unagi in my Kyoto post. Although I eat both types, the picky eater only likes the Kansai style unagi.

Earlier photos taken:

My main reason for visiting Kyushu island was to see the famous wisteria tunnel at Kawachi Fuji Garden 河内藤園.

The flowers in the tunnel looked more sparse than what I expected.

Other than the 2 tunnels, there are other areas for wisteria viewing in the compound.

They also feature different varieties of wisteria.

As the garden do not have proper footpath, it might be challenging for elderly who would need to walk up the gentle pebble trail slope.

This garden is small compared to the Ashikaga Flower Park that we visited near Tokyo. It is also more challenging to plan for a visit here as tickets for a specific date and time slot have to be purchased in advance in order to enter this private Garden (no restriction on exit time). This ticketing management certainly help in crowd control as the garden was never too crowded during our visit. It is also worthy to note that this garden is located on the mountain with limited traffic accessibility. We used the shuttle bus service provided during the peak season which is available at every half-hour interval from JR Yahata Station. In a way, we were lucky to be able to board the bus without a long wait but had to stand throughout the bus journey for both ways through the winding road (around 20 mins each way).

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