August 01, 2009
中村藤吉本店
Uji has a long history in tea production, serving the noble houses in nearby Kyoto. With its two UN World Heritage temples and many historic tea merchants, it makes for a conveniently interesting day-trip in Kansai. Many of the tea-merchants have added tea-houses to serve the tourists, and Nakamura Tokichi is one of the larger places. They have a newer cafe along the river near the Byodo-In Temple, but we decided to visit the original Honten building, opened for business in 1858, located in a prime spot near the JR train station.
We were expecting hot weather and big crowds on a summer Saturday. But a freak thunderstorm in the morning had scared away the day-trippers and cooled off the air, leaving the streets relatively empty and us slightly wet. However we still wanted to get a taste of their summer specialties. The vegetarian soba seemed like just the ticket for a light lunch, since the menu promoted it as a lunch special with big, attractive pictures. Turned out other tables got the hot-soup soba which would've been preferable to the cold noodles, but we couldn't read the Japanese menu so we missed out on that option. But the combo meal was a decent deal, also coming with a serving of macha ice cream topped with azuki and mochi, served in a cute bamboo cup, as well as a glass of iced macha tea.
Even though we were almost shivering in the air-conditioned room, we still had to order the signature きんとき shaved-ice dessert. A big bowl of finely shaved ice, with macha and molasses syrups to drizzle on top. Azuki paste and mochi balls to moderate the icy coldness and offer different taste textures. Topped off with a dollop of soft-serve vanilla ice cream just because they can. The syrups were sweet with flavor without being artificial-tasting, and by judicious pouring you can keep it from getting to sweet. The ice cream added some rich creaminess to keep the pile of slush from being too overwhelmingly cold. You can always chew on a mochi ball for a while if brain-freeze kicked in.
中村藤吉本店
京都府宇治市宇治壱番十番地
0774-22-7800