"All you need is love.
But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
Charles M. Schulz
I've been to Sendai twice. Once as a volunteer in the tsunami disaster area, twice for pleasure.
This
city in the northern region of Honshu island is blessed with rich
nature and enjoys fruitful harvests from both land and sea. The region
has produced unique delicacies since ancient
times and its seafood has established a solid reputation for freshness.
Fresh sushi and oysters from Matsushima Bay are among the most famous
Sendai specialties. Sukiyaki made with Sendai beef
and fish tempura are also both highly recommended.

The city is currently holding a campaign called "Sendai Destination Campaign" to promote tourism around the city.
In all, there are lots of local food to eat in Sendai. However, if you are there, there should be only one thing in your mind - gyutan (beef tongue). Sendai is so famous for this piece of thing, grilled over charcoal that you will find gyutan restaurants literally littered around the whole city. You can read my first time trying out this delicacy at the end of this post.
Here, I would like to introduce several Sendai specialties that I got to try from a half-day food hunt around the city.

This is Zunda Saryo (ずんだ茶寮), a famous brand that specialises on zunda-based mochi, cakes and snacks, found at the west exit of Sendai Station.

A huge varieties of zunda (sweet edamame paste) products, including fuki dorayaki (富貴どら焼) on the left.
Next up was this small little hut hidden in between huge shopping malls. The shop has a simple name - Taikichi (鯛きち). Tai is a Japanese word which refers to sparidae, or more commonly known as sea breams. This shop sells taiyaki (たいやき), a type of Japanese pancake-like snack shaped like a fish and usually containing sweet filling in the middle.
What makes the taiyaki in this shop unique is the specially made gyutan curry taiyaki, which I believed is only found in Sendai.
Clis Road Shopping District, a pedestrianised and covered shopping arcade near Sendai Station.
The next stop was at Abekamaboko (阿部蒲鉾) to try out another speciality - hyotan-age (ひょうたん揚げ). It is a Sendai-style corn dog with kamaboko (fishcake) instead of sausage inside. It is usually served together with spicy ketchup.
Apparently,
everyone from Sendai knows this shop, located along the famous Cris
Road shopping arcade near Sendai Station. The hyoutan-age from this shop
is really delicious, that it is common to see long lines queuing up to
try it out.

However, if you are lucky, you can get another stick for free. Anyone who has his wooden stick with the atari (当り) carving will get another stick free of charge!

Hot and chrispy outside, and sticky inside. The small piece of seaweed was the icing on the

Another interesting snack called kashiwa mochi (柏餅), a Japanese traditional sweets eaten on Children's Day on May 5th.

Kashiwa mochi is a kind of steamed mochi made with glutinous rice flour, joshin-ko (上新粉) and shiratama-ko (白玉粉), wrapping sweet red bean paste inside.
Each of them is then
wrapped with kashiwa (oak leaves).

Zunda is so popular in Sendai, that they even came out with zunda jam! The world's one and only it says.

Bought a box of zunda manju and okanemochi lol! To those who doesn't speak Japanese, okanemochi (お金持ち) can also mean "rich" hahaha!
That's
all for my short Sendai trip. Hope you enjoy reading. And ohhh by the
way, getting to see *ehem* comments *ehem* from my readers will always
turn me like this ^.^
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