A short food trip to Nagoya 🍣 🍨

En-route to Toyko from Takayama, we decided to spend half a day in Nagoya, which is the largest city in the Chubu region and is the capital of the Aichi Prefecture located on the Pacific coast. Once we got to the station we were surrounded by massive shopping centres connected all around the station. I even found an official Studio Ghibli store so I had to check it out and purchase some merchandises. After shopping my friends and I went our separate ways and split into two groups, the group that continues shopping at Nagoya station and my group, where we were on the hunt for good food! Food is always my priority, which is why Ardi, Florence and I took the train and travelled two stops away to Hisayaodori for fresh sashimi and sushi! 

We went to the store called すし旬 久屋店 (Sushi Shun Hisaya-ten) which I found via Instagram when I was preparing for my trip and bookmarking all these local eateries. This place is quite popular amongst the locals and there is no English menu available, so make sure you have a friend who is able to communicate or read Japanese to make things easier. However, if you're Japanese skills are not as great as they use to be (like us!) or if you don't speak the language, just use INSTAGRAM! The staff were super friendly and helpful when we were trying to decide what to eat while we shared images we found on Instagram and they even recommended a few of their personal favourites too. 

We ordered the uni (sea urchin), o-toro (fatty tuna), chu-toro (medium fatty tuna), quail eggs, ankimo (monkfish liver), aburi salmon and shirako (fish sperm). All of the seafood were incredibly fresh! The uni was very sweet and had no salty or bitter flavours to it. We decided to get it sashimi style so we could truly enjoy the natural flavours. The chu-toro and o-toro was honestly to die for! I had the chu-toro first as I knew the o-toro would be much more intense in flavour. The pieces of fish would literally melt into your mouth covering your taste buds with the beautiful umami flavours of the tuna. Now the shirako was interesting, I've been meaning to try this dish and I must say...I'm not too much a fan of it. It might of been the way it was marinated but it was creamy with a citrus flavour to it which kind of threw me off a bit. However, the aburi salmon was rich in flavour, the quail egg was not so bad itself but the ankimo was definitely one of my favourites! The ankimo was a recommended by the staff and boy was this recommendation great! It has a very rich and creamy taste yet at the same time very light and delicate, feeling silky and velvety to the palate, which is kind of like foie gras. 

They also offer tempura, hot dishes, lunch meals and sushi omakase if you're not too sure what to order. I highly visiting this sushi store as it is only 9 minutes away from Nagoya station. As I mentioned earlier, they do not have an English menu meaning you can't go wrong if you see the locals flocking to this place for lunch and dinner. 

After lunch we headed back towards the direction of Nagoya station but made another pit stop at Kokusai Centre Station for dessert at a parfait cafe called Cafe de Lyon Bleu. I suggest coming in earlier if you don't want to wait! This place is very popular with the locals but luckily for us we didn't have to wait too long as we came in just before the after-lunch crowd started coming in for something sweet. 

At this cafe you are expected to ordered an item per person, so our plan to have two parfaits and share between the three of us kinda went down the drain a little. However the plus side was we got to try an additional flavour! At first glimpse you'd think the cafe is really tiny but once you enter there is a spacious area just behind the kitchen corridor which seats 55 customers at a time.  

We ordered their special premium strawberry parfait, which was also their #1 popular parfait, the spring citrus parfait, which is their #2 popular parfait and their seasonal sakura (cherry blossom) parfait.

The strawberry parfait is topped with fresh cream, strawberry jelly, pulp and fruits, homemade chiffon and vanilla ice cream.The spring citrus has milk tea ice cream ,tea jelly, fresh cream, blood orange gelato topped with orange and grapefruit. Lastly the sakura parfait, only available during the Spring season of Japan consist of vanilla and red bean ice cream, sakura chiffon, sakura mont blanc, sakura warabi mochi, grape jelly, meringue and strawberries. 

All three had their own unique combination of flavours and textures, however out of the three I must say the strawberry parfait was my favourite. It was just so refreshing without being overly sweet after a few bites. The citrus parfait started to get a little too sweet once we were halfway and the sakura parfait had more subtle flavours in comparison which will pair well with a cup of earl grey tea. Though I really enjoyed the different ice cream flavours from both the citrus and sakura parfait. We managed to finish all three with a few bits of chiffon or jelly remaining as well as some melted ice cream. I was actually really looking forward to getting my parfait fix in Nagoya because it was the only thing I saw on my instagram feed that consistently kept popping up! 

After our parfaits it was time to find the rest of our friends back at Nagoya station and head towards Tokyo. Although our trip to Nagoya was a short one, I can definitely see myself coming back to this city to thoroughly enjoy the food and neighbourhood again. 

Have you explored Nagoya before, if so what do you recommend doing, visiting and eating there?