8 November 2024
After a day of driving and sightseeing, we arrived at Kagoshima, Kyushu's southernmost major city and the capital of Kagoshima Prefecture. Our hotel in Kagoshima was Dormy Inn Kagoshima, located along Takamibaba Street, the main street with the Kagoshima city trams running along it.
From our hotel, it was only a few minutes walk along the main street to Tenmonkan, the shopping and dining area in Kagoshima’s downtown area. This area is lined many souvenir shops, izakayas and restaurants.
One of the “must-try” when visiting Kagoshima is their kurobuta (black pork) which is considered a top brand because of the unique breeding and raising method. The pork is said to have a unique umami and sweetness that is enhanced by feeding the pig with sweet potatoes during the growing period. It is characterized by its crisp, tender red meat that has sweetness and a rich flavour and fat that is light, and not sticky.
Wanting to try the famous kurobuta pork, I made a reservation for dinner at Ichiniisan Tenmonkanten. Ichiniisan is a store that specializes in Kagoshima black pork. Ichiniisan was the first in Japan to create black pork shabu-shabu, which is eaten with soba soup. The restaurant also offers a wide variety of black pork dishes such as the black pork tonkatsu.
We had time to do some shopping before dinner. There is a large shopping mall located at the crossroad and entrance to the covered shopping street of Tenmonkan. We went to the observation deck on the 15th floor of CenTerrace Tenmonkan but the night view was not good due to the bright interior and Kagoshima’s iconic volcano Sakurajima was not visible at night.
We went to check out the local drug stores for beauty and health products. After buying some stuff as per our shopping list, we went to look for the restaurant.
Although the restaurant is located on the second floor of the building and the signage is all in Japanese, we managed to locate it easily using Google Maps.
It was recommended to make reservation as we saw lines of people waiting for tables at the corridor. Since we had prior reservation, we were seated pretty quickly.
While walking to our seats, I spied a large tower stacked with plates of thinly sliced black pork behind a wall to ceiling glass panel. The shabu shabu pork was nicely arranged in a floral pattern, making them look so tempting.
We were seated on counter seats facing a chef who was doing some cooking for other guests. We ordered our meal through the chef after looking at an English language menu.
Shabu shabu is an ideal way to enjoy kurobuta taste. Thin slices of meat are cooked in a boiling hot pot and then dipped in a tasty sauce.
There are different shabu shabu sets with various options of side dishes. We ordered the Ichinoaji set for 4,200 yen The Ichioaji set came with black pork shabu-shabu with assorted vegetables, fresh soba noodles, small appetiser, “dish of the day”, black pork cutlet (tonkatsu), black pork porridge and dessert. We added a basic kurobuta pork shabu-shabu set with soba noodle and fresh vegetables for 2,900 yen.
The appetiser, braised pork with root vegetables (dish of the day) and small piece of black pork cutlet (tonkatsu) that came with the Ichinoaji set were served first. The black pork tonkatsu was juicy and delicious, giving us a good prelude to the shabu shabu that is to come next.
The staff brought the hot pot, black pork, vegetables, condiments like yuzu pepper, sliced white onions and dipping sauces to the table.
The pork for the shabu shabu was very thinly sliced with beautiful pink and white meat.
A tip to enjoy shabu-shabu is to parboil very quickly and then dip the soft meat into the dipping sauce. The high quality fat of the belly has no odor and a unique sweetness.
We added plenty of the white onions and yuzu pepper to the dipping sauce to enhance the flavours as directed by the staff. The "Special Yuzu Pepper" is made from yuzu harvested in a remote mountain village in Miyazaki Prefecture, and is a special blend of 80% yuzu peel and 20% chili pepper. For me who like some spiciness in my food, I added quite a lot of this.
We cooked the fresh soba noodles in the broth at the end. By now, the broth was full of flavour and sweetness from cooking the pork and vegetables. The soba noodles are chewy and extremely delicious. The portion provided was quite large and we could not finish all the noodles.
After the shabu shabu and soba, we were served the black pork rice porridge and dessert.
Although there are claims that Kagoshima’s black pork is 4 times tastier than normal pork, I think it is an over exaggerated claim. Nevertheless, the black pork shabu shabu was so delicious that I wished the portion could have been larger. Overall, we had a very delicious dinner and were glad that we had tasted one of Kagoshima’s renowned cuisine.
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