KANAZAWA: Omicho Ichiba 近江町市場 - Yamasan Sushi honten

I have been taking things really slow the last few days, we were in my favourite city in the whole world - TOKYO ( and I say were because we are currently on the shinkansen to hokkaido), recharging for the next 2 weeks of skiing :D

And the reason why I haven't been blogging is because, Nick and I practically binge-watched this newly on netflix high school teenage british show - Sex Education.
We loved it, it's so funny. Well done to all the actors, esp Otis and Eric ! My favourite duo :D

Continuing where we left off...
Kanazawa is an amazing city to have seafood because it's just right off the sea of Japan.
Eat to your delights, minimal radiation. The downside, if you dreamt of having X-men mutant kids, your chances of having one from eating the seafood here is unlikely.

Having been once to Omicho before in the huge snowstorm last year ohgosh, don't even get me started. There were limited shops opened. Last year we randomly ate this kaisen don restaurant and even so, it was amazing, just look at the overflowing amount of fish!

And if seafood is not really your thing, there's also stalls selling wagyu beef sticks.

Yummy

This year we came more prepared, we did more thorough researched, rather Nick did the most thorough research and for the first time he told me " we need to eat at this restaurant"

Quite overwhelming stepping into this restaurant, there's this old chef dude just standing near the doorway, and he isn't doing anything apart from slowly disassembling you from top to toe with his watchful eyes.....

And behold, the whole reason why Nick chose this place is because, they serve the MOST beautiful kaisen-don (topped with goldflakes! ) 

3000yen FOR THIS BOWL. heaps of seafood including snowcrab!

Incidentally past by this heavily queued oden shop. Aiya, I was brought up in Asia so I always have this asian mentality of " QUEUE AH? QUEUE = VERY GOOD" 

So I joined the queue, but meanwhile we needed to have a strategy because tables were taken up very fast, and Nick can't possibly stand at an empty table without any food while I queue.

So we ordered from cooked dish from the same stall. 

Fried oysters because oysters are my favourite and oysters are in season :D 

Grilled scallop in butter, YUMMM can't ever go wrong 

And this is the oden menu.

Look at how long the queue is!

Me almost approaching the queue

Our motto for this trip is " Eat the Best only " Meaning, lets say shop A sells beef. But shop A's specialty is Chicken. Just because I like to eat beef doesn't mean I have to eat beef. So I should only eat Chicken from Shop A. 

So I ordered oden that only can be found in Kanazawa

The bowl that I'm holding on my left hand ( your right), it's nogoguro ( black throat sea perch) meat stuffed in a crab shell. It was AMAZING. 

 Kanazawa is really close to Tokyo, about 2.5 hours via Shinkansen.
I really recommend a day trip out of Tokyo to Kanazawa if you have days to spare just for the seafood ( very very reasonable price! In fact I would even call it cheap for the seafood quality you get! ) and....

BONUS HERE. I usually don't review/post pictures of tourist attractions but.. my next post... shall feature..... Kenrokuen Gardens, one of the top 3 gardens in Japan, is really beautiful. And I highly encourage all to make a trip to this garden if you're ever in kanazawa. Its worth more than the 310yen admission fee.