Eating in Akita
Try these dishes while you are here.
Try these dishes while you are here.
Order the first one and work down the list.
We recommend ordering this one first.
Pounded rice moulded on a stick, grilled, then simmered in chicken hotpot with burdock and mushrooms.
Thin hand-stretched udon, eaten cold with two dipping sauces. Lighter than the udon of the west.
A named local chicken, grilled or in the hotpot above.
Daikon radish smoked over a hearth and then pickled. Salty, smoky, and served with cream cheese now.
Small shops, no English sign outside, and worth the walk.
Rice is pounded flat, wrapped round a cedar stick and grilled, then cut up and simmered with chicken and mushrooms. On weekdays it is an evening dish only — Sundays and holidays it opens for lunch as well.
Inaniwa udon is stretched by hand and dried flat, thinner than most udon. The workshop is on the same site and you can watch it being made.
Yokote fries flat noodles with cabbage and mince, puts a fried egg over them and a spoon of pickled ginger at the side. Six minutes on foot from Yokote station.
About sixty stalls under one roof, five minutes from Akita station. Fish, rice, sake, and the smoked pickles the prefecture is known for. Traders start before five.
Hinai-jidori is a named breed, raised loose on the hills of northern Akita. The thigh is grilled over charcoal first, then bound in barely-set egg.
Kakunodate keeps both its samurai quarter and its merchant street. This brewery stands on the merchant side and sells its own miso and soy sauce, and vegetables pickled in them.
Masuda built its storehouses inside its houses, and the street of them is kept as it was. This dining room sits in one of those buildings, run by the family that makes the koji.
Morokoshi is not corn, whatever the name suggests. It is red bean flour pressed into a mould, and this shop stands on the samurai street at Kakunodate.
A stone heated until it glows is dropped into a wooden tub of broth. It boils in seconds and cooks the raw seafood all at once. This place says on its own site that you do not need a booking.
Rice cooked in the shop’s own stock with sweet-salty chicken on top. Sold boxed from early morning, or served as a set in the dining room inside.