Fatty's - Hayama

Here's a restaurant for the "Beyond" in "Blue Street and Beyond."  Fatty's is located in Hayama, not far from Sagami Bay and not far from the Hayama Imperial Villa. Easily reachable from Yokosuka or Zushi. See the blog map for location of the restaurant and nearby parking. Special thanks goes to "Hank in Hayama"  who discovered Fatty's.

There is probably not another kind of food besides Italian that the Japanese try to replicate more. Back in Hawaii our favorite Italian place was run by Japanese. Not all of them get it right. But I'm happy to report that Fatty's Pasta and Pizza does get it right.  And you don't survive as a restaurant since 1987, as they have, unless you're doing many things right.

I'd like to say Fatty's is at the intersection of X and Y roads, but as is the case with many Japanese roads it just doesn't work that way. It's at the intersection of 207 and, well - 207.

You'll find parking for Fatty's at a small shop at the same intersection. Make sure you only park in the designated spots for Fatty's. There should be four of them. Since the parking is easy to miss I've added it to the blog map.  Once parked it's a very short walk to the restaurant.

The crust and quality toppings make for an excellent pizza at Fatty's. The husband and wife team appear to make it all by scratch in their tiny kitchen at the back of their equally small restaurant that holds only 12 people.

Four pizzas were sampled and they were all excellent. The crust was perfectly golden brown and crispy. Toppings were not skimpy and all seemed quite fresh.

Although I didn't get a chance to try the pasta. I'm sure the quality compares to the pizza. Photos of the pasta can be see on the tabelog site. The menu is all English.

There's no deep meaning behind their name.  As the owner put it simply - "If you eat a lot, you too will become a Fatty"

Mushroom, Chicken, and Pineapple

Garlic Shrimp

Ginger Chicken w/ pineapple

Tomato, crab meat, and olives

Crispy garlic bread made with fresh garlic

Park here

Clean interior

Kuimonoya - Izakaya

After being in Japan a while you get an image that comes to mind when you hear the word Izakaya. Typically they are very warm and inviting places, and some actually are part of the owner's home. The food is comforting and varied.  Saying "modern Izakaya" may be an oxymoron, although there are several out there.  Having said that, I would be happy in just about any Izakaya you put me in.

Front entrance

Kuimonoya (くいもの屋) Wan fits the traditional Izakaya style quite well and I recommend you visit. Kuimono means food and 屋 or "Ya" means shop or restaurant among other things.

Kuimonoya is located on the 7th floor above the Pachinko parlor on Blue Street. If that doesn't narrow it down please check out the blog map.  You'll take the elevator up and then go to the left as you get off. Restaurant Gohan, another good bet that I haven't written up yet, is also on this floor, although I recently heard Gohan is under new management and may not even be called Gohan anymore.
Kuimonoya is a chain restaurant with quite a few locations around Japan, all of which have well designed interiors. Check their website here and another review site here.  Judging from the crowd, this is a reliably good place.

Just about everyone is seated in private booths with sliding doors. Your feet are in a well under the table. Each table has a button to summon the wait staff. One area they could improve upon is this doorbell type system, which goes off and it keeps going until acknowledged by the staff. With a lot of different booths it can get a bit distracting. The separate booths do help to separate you from the smokers in the place. They have a sign on the counter "分煙" which means separate areas for  smokers and non-smokers.


居酒屋  is the Kanji for Izakaya.  In general, it means a place where you can sit down and drink sake. These places eventually started serving food with the sake and hence you have the modern day (but traditional) Izakaya. At Izakayas, you will likely order many small to medium sized dishes and share them. It's a great way to try many different dishes and find your favorite.

"Seating charge" salad

 As the front of the menu states, there is a seating charge here. You can do some more searching on your own concerning this custom at some Japanese places. Whether it is worth it or not is hard to say. For this charge you do get a small salad and some tsukemono (varies from Izakaya to Izakaya) and the privilege of sitting there of course.  While others online claim it is possible to turn down these dishes and the associated seating fee, it's not very polite. If you feel strongly about not wanting to pay the seating fee I'm sure you can decline it and you'll likely live to see another day. But it's not being a good ambassador to Japan - and besides,  I'm sure the Yakuza generally don't own Izakayas, so you have nothing to worry about.

Oden

 The oden above was served in quite a large bowl and you can see the large daikon radish. This is a dish that  you can just keep eating little by little throughout the meal.

"Wan" style Caesar salad

 Most of the contents of the Caesar salad was hidden on the underside. Interesting, but it was nothing to write home about.

Tori momo yakitori

Tsukemono, pancake, deep fried gobo (burdock) root

 The deep fried burdock root (gobo) on the top right are really really tasty. I've made these at home but the seasoning they have here is better. Tastes like a bit of curry seasoning.  I might try it the next time I make them. The pancake was also pretty good.

Shiso pork roll 

The shiso pork roll was unremarkable. Surprisingly bland for having shiso and bacon.  Times like these make me appreciate Maido even more...

Kuimonoya has a lot on their menu. It's good enough that we'll likely go back and try some of the other dishes. The menu is in both English and Japanese. They are open for dinner only and stay open very late.

Interesting interior

Some counter seating and yakitori grill

Shinen Korean and Yakinikku

Shinen is a cozy little family run place tucked in one of the back lanes of Yokosuka. If you're familiar with it's location it's likely because someone told you about it or because you walk down narrow dark alleys at night for some reason. See the blog map for location.

伸宴　Shinen

伸宴 - The Kanji for Shinen means lengthy/spread out banquet. The two smaller kanji on the building in the photo above are Yakiniku or 焼　肉. Yakiniku is a great kanji compound to learn because you'll see it all over Japan. Yaki means cooking or baking and niku is meat.

Part of a set meal

As you can see the menu (below) has a good selection as long as you like Korean food.  There are some interesting picks on the menu since we can't let any part of the animal go to waste. The Yaki-niku set meals are a good safe choice if you're unsure.  The set meals are on the bottom left of the first menu.

This is a place where it's OK to bring your family/kids as we did see several Japanese families.
Shinen only has about 4 tables with floor seating and two small tables with chairs for normal sitting.  There is no English menu and you'll be taking your chances as far as being around diners who smoke, but we didn't have any problem.

Some side dishes that come with the set meal

Cold noodles

For those of you who like eating organ meat or want to go on an Andrew Zimmern adventure this place might meet your needs. Note they have the coveted cow's third stomach. The 3rd stomach is often used for sashimi as it is in the menu below. I suppose you could cook any of it, but it's listed in the sashimi section. The tripe/ cow's stomach in the section above the sashimi section is the one to order if you want to cook it.

* Restaurant Don

There are restaurants with great food and there are restaurants with a great location. Restaurant Don is a restaurant where they have both - where the food matches the grandeur of the view. A shout out goes to friends and new parents "Chris and Laura" who tipped us off to Don.

A sunset behind snow capped Fuji

As you can see from the photo above, the sunsets can be really nice. Restaurant Don realizes this and posts the sunset time on their website so that you can time your visit correctly if it's your goal to see the sunset.

Restaurant Don is located on highway 134 on the coast of Sagami Bay.  The building doesn't stand out as you're driving along the road, but they have some nice blue flags waving with their name to catch your attention. Check out the Google street view before you go.

They have a very small parking lot along Hwy 134 that fits 5 cars if they are parked just right. There is another public parking lot along the water (as shown in the picture above) but don't assume that it will be empty. The only reason the lot was empty in the picture was because it was closed due to the high surf.

Restaurant Don's website has pictures of downstairs, upstairs and outside.  The upstairs is no smoking, while the downstairs allows it and has a bar. Their website also has an access map, but it's not of much help. Check out the blog map to find Restaurant Don. (Note: The street view does not line up well with the location of the restaurant on the map. So I've added another purple place-mark to mark the location of the parking lot using Google street view - drop the street view man here)

Lets get to the food. Don's focus is on local produce and "homemade" food. Their menu covers everything from salads, soups, appetizers, meat dishes (steak, ribs), fish dishes, pizza, pasta, and dessert.

We started a lazy afternoon (having arrived a bit early for dinner) with some coffee, tea, juice and an appetizer - cheese pie. The cheese wrapped in phyllo dough and then baked and it's not a dessert. The menu doesn't reveal the type of cheese but it was mild flavored.  Maybe an expert out there can tell by the photo.

Cheese pie

We then ordered the "Fancy Variety Set Course" for two. All of Don's menus were available in Japanese and English, even the seasonal menu, which is unusual. Since they don't post their full menus online I've included them below.

Cold appetizers

Warm appetizers

 Warm appetizers included the Cheese pie (liked it the second time too!), ham quiche, and a shrimp and Camembert cheese in a spring roll, served with a Thai sweet chili sauce.

Ham and Cheese Calzone

So what about that name? Restaurant Don? There is no kanji, hiragana or katakana. Just "Don."  The owner speaks pretty good English so I asked him. His name was not Don, go figure, but he said it meant "Boss." And he liked that evidently.

Some may remember a mafia boss called John Gotti, the infamous leader of the Gambino crime family in New York. Because of his flashy dress the media would call him "Dapper Don." And then later, after escaping conviction in three high profile trials he got the name "Teflon Don." In the mafia, the "Don" is the master, leader or boss.

But still, why do they call the boss "Don?" Well it appears that both Spanish and Italian have the word Don/Dona/Donna which is derived from the latin word Dominus - meaning master/lord. In Spanish and Italian it was used as an honorific before someone's name. Not just anybody, but someone of royalty. So the mafia crime bosses would adopt this name normally reserved for nobility. Remember Don Corleone in the Godfather series?

Interestingly there is a Japanese word dan'na  旦那 - どんな.  "どんな"  means sir, boss, master, or someone of high stature.  This may be an attempt to copy the Spanish and Italian dona/donna through use of  the Kanji for their sounds "Dan" and "Na" since the individual Kanji don't mean anything ("daybreak" and "what") close to boss.

Risotto

Half eaten salad - oops

Pasta course

The pasta course crab with a cream sauce. Very good.
All the food here was very good so I'm ready to call him Don or Master. His real name though is Masahiro (which itself sounds like "master") Ogushi.

Dessert Course

Dessert course consisted of one ice cream, one sherbet, fruit and creme brulee. Notice the chocolate "Don"

Cheese Pizza

Iced coffee with cream

Mango juice

Real Napkins!

Don's Owner - Masahiro-san

Would be real nice seats on a warm night

Random Japan picture of the day: 

If you're ever in Sasebo Japan, check out "Steak Salon Asakusa." It's a bit pricey but a great meal in a wonderful atmosphere. 

Steak Salon Asakusa, Sasebo Japan