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Our search led us to Minato-ya in the coastal town of Izu-Kogen. It seemed like a decent choice with good food reviews and that photo of the onsen looking out into the ocean seemed like it would be worth it, especially for the price of around 8,000 yen per person (including dinner and breakfast).
After getting off the shinkansen bullet train at Atami station, we boarded the local train that goes down the Izu coast. This train hugs the coast along some high mountains and cliffs, so it's a gorgeous ride. It took about 40 minutes to get to Izu-Kogen. From there, we called the onsen to have them pick us up from the station. Izu-Kogen is a real podunk town, and one sign of this was being picked up in the personal car of a 20-ish looking dude (the son of the family running the ryokan). It really felt like we were deep in Japan at this point.
Minato-ya is a small family-run ryokan probably built in the 60s or 70s, with about 8 or 9 rooms. The onsen is on the top floor of the building. It's a little run-down looking, but that was part of the charm. Here's a photo from our room:
We were greeted by the mother of the family as we checked in, and she gave us some pointers on where we could take strolls around the area. On our way out for a stroll, we ran into the grandmother of the family, and she was a friendly woman, who wouldn't stop talking. We walked along the cliffs above the small fishing port (there's a small fish market right there). There's also a hiking/walking path that extends several kilometers up the Izu coast from here. It was already getting dark by the time we walked a little, so we headed back so we could try the onsen before dinner.
Dinner started with a small plate of sashimi.
These are both local fish. The one on the right was some kind of aji (horse mackerel) and so delicious.
And the next few courses:
There's a sazae tsubayaki (not again!), a salad with octopus, tomato and kaiware (radish sprouts), and a sunomono with squid, crab, and cucumber. The sazae was enjoyable as usual. The salad with the octopus was interesting since it was made with lemon and olive oil. Kind of unexpected for a podunk ryokan to be westernizing their food, but it was lovely. But the star was the sunomono. The crab and squid were superfresh, but the addition of that little egg yolk sauce was fantastic. Here's a closer look.
Sunomono is usually very light with cucumber and seafood of some sort, but that sauce added a richness to the zest of the vinegar. We all loved it. It still stands out as one of the most delicious things of this trip.
The next course was the seafood nabe.
There's scallops, crab, I'm not sure what that red fish is (I don't think it's snapper), and a soft roe of some kind of fish, and vegetables like mizuna, enoki mushrooms, carrots, and namafu (wheat gluten) in the maple shape. There was a ponzu dipping sauce for the nabe. Boy was this good. It was already a mountain of fresh fish and seafood. Not sure there's a way to go wrong with that.
Here's the next course.
This is another local fish (can't remember what kind) broiled with another kind of egg sauce. The little roll there is rakkyo (pickled scallion bulbs) wrapped in a pickled shiso leaf. The fish was good, but not as memorable as the shiso wrapped rakkyo. I'm going to have to try that one at home.
The next course is a fish called okoze (translated as stonefish), which is a really bony, spiny fish.
The meat is filleted and fried kara-age style, then the entire rest of the fish is fried, so you can eat the whole thing. The okoze was great. The meat was firm and sweet, and something about frying that gives it that crunchy goodness. The rest of the fish was also enjoyable, like cracklings. How can this not be good? This was another memorable dish.
When the tsukemono (pickles) come, you know you're close to the end of the meal. But these tsukemono were great.
I especially loved the cucumber with katsuo on the top right. Also, with what's left with the seafood nabe, we were given udon noodles to cook into the broth, and it was good, but for seafood, I always preferred rice to throw in to the nabe to make zosui. So that's what we did.
The only disappointment was dessert. They served kanten (agar noodles) in a sweet vinegar, topped with mustard.
Kanten is something that's become very popular in Japan in the last few years, though it's been around for a long time. But I think of it as something you have during the hot summer months. It's not really sweet, and the vinegar adds a tartness that I don't really associate with dessert. The mother of the family was serving us, and she told us that the kanten is homemade, and she looked so proud of it, but none of us could eat more than a spoonful. I felt somewhat guilty, but also disappointed that the end of the meal fizzled with the dessert. Otherwise, it was a fantastic meal.
