For dinner, I ended up at Umibozu, a Shizuoka oden specialist inside Shizuoka Station that I’d spotted that morning.

The kitchen of Togakushi Soba Isooroshi, snapped on the way

Looks like they’re hard at work..

Inside Umibozu

It’s a pretty big place, but the booths have partitions, so you get some privacy, which I liked.

Lemon sour

Starting off light..

Some kimchi too..

I think you could pick your otoshi from a few options.

Edamame

Pretty good.

Shimizu motsu curry

Apparently it’s a well-known dish from the Shimizu area. Nicely punchy, so it went great with drinks.

Shizuoka oden

As you’d expect from a specialist, the daikon was simmered through without falling apart. Tasty all round, and the beef tendon (gyusuji) was especially good.

Dashiko

There’s an explanation on it: shake the powder onto a small plate and dip each piece right before eating. Shizuoka oden has two defining features: one is that the broth isn’t the main event, and the other is dipping it in this dashiko.

Like this..

Dashiko is a powder of dried sardine or mackerel mixed with aonori seaweed, and dipping your oden in it really levels up the flavour. A magic spice, you could say.. You can’t talk about Shizuoka oden without trying it with this. Eating it myself, I finally got what makes Shizuoka oden so special.

Egg

The soft-boiled yolk was just perfect.. It’s a shop inside the station, but they really know what they’re doing. A place I’d like to go back to.. and I’d love to visit other famous Shizuoka oden places too.. I had no idea authentic Shizuoka oden would be this good. Plenty of places do good oden, but the combination with dashiko is something else.

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