After a death defying drive from Uji to Gifu (ok, I am exaggerating here), we finally arrived in Gifu City. Part of the reason that I wanted to be in Gifu was because we wanted to take a trip through the Kiso Valley, which was roughly another hour plus away. Also as I was researching Gifu, I learned about their ayu sweetfish catching by the cormorant birds in the Nagara River during the summer, so I booked a fishing tour at night, and had an ayu fish themed dinner at Kawaramachi Izumiya, which was very close to the dock.
We were early for the reservation. So we admired ayu grilling by the chef a little bit, then walked around the old town of Kawaramachi 川原町 for half an hour before our dinner.
Kawaramachi was riverside port district for merchants since the era of Oda Nobunaga. When we showed up, it was about 5:30pm so it seemed like most of the tourist shops already closed up. Its too bad we didn’t come earlier and didn’t know about Kawaramachi, but the machiya houses along the main thoroughfare were quite well preserved, almost as good as some of the old post towns we would visit the following day in the Kiso Valley.
Old time round red post office box- they actually looked kind of British.
Gifu Prefecture is famed for paper craft- Mino washi 美濃和紙, and was recognized as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, one of the three washi in Japan to receive the recognition. Mino is a town about an hour away from Gifu City.
Gifu uchiwa fan shop.
We ordered three ¥3630 set, with one coming with the ayu ramen, as well as a ¥4730 set with ayu with roe.
Pickles to start.
Sweetfish rilette and cream. This was actually quite French.
Grilled salted ayu sweetfish.
This one with the roe.
Tiny dried shrimps and anchovies.
Ayu ramen.
Ayu porridge (the default option if not upgraded to ramen).
Overall, the meal was decent. Of all the dish, I enjoyed the porridge the most, because the small ayu pieces went really well with the flavorful porridge. The ramen was a little odd because the ayu didn’t really have any discernible synergy with the ramen. Go with the cheaper and better porridge option. The grilled ayu was a bit heavy on the salt, so the salt somewhat covered the sweet flavor of the ayu.
Lots of food souvenir available downstairs.
The comorant was ready to pounce!
The restaurant had a lot of live edge tables, which looked very nice of course, and the tables likely came from the live edge table factory right next door.
Time for the ayu fishing tour!
and ran over.
