azekuraya

i hope i got it correct. we were walking toward nigatsudo hall and my husband suddenly felt peckish. and there was this store selling souvenirs and ice creams. at first we wanted to buy some ice creams, but we saw there was a menu book outside. we took a look and the food seemed okay, so we decided to went inside. later i googled and probably the place is called "azekuraya" so i hope i got it right (check their website here).

chicken teriyaki

anyway, the place was small, but it was all tables and chairs, four chairs per table. i didn't think there was any high-chair for kids, but if you brought your own portable one, it would be useful since the chairs had backing so you had something to tie your portable into. the waiter couldn't speak english, but she understood simple english. they also had english menu. if you were vegetarian, i think you could eat something here as i saw mostly the menu were vegetarian. we ordered a gyudon bowl and a chicken teriyaki bowl. husband decided to try something and ordered a mitarashi dango. beside rice bowl, they had udon and soba menu as well. they also had several japanese dessert menu as well.

gyudon

when we were there, the place was empty since it was not lunch time yet. but probably you would have to wait longer when it's full since there were only two waiters that i saw. and considering it was only us, it still took about 15 minutes to get our meal. expect longer waiting time when it's full. anyway, i didn't taste my husband's chicken teriyaki. but my gyudon was okay. i could eat more though. somehow i felt the portion was not enough. probably since we've been eating a lot since we arrived in japan. the meat portion was even smaller. well, to give you comparison, yoshinoya would give you a half bowl full of rice and then covered it with meat, and this one only gave you almost half bowl of rice and the meat almost covering the bowl. the meal was enjoyable, it gave us something nice and warm and bit fulfilling.

mitarashi dango

the mitarashi dango was a different story though. we didn't know what it was since husband thought we should try their traditional food, we might like it. but he was wrong. i googled it and it was a glutinous rice balls put into a skewer and glazed by sweet soy sauce. the sauce was okay, it was sweet but not super sweet. the dango was a different story. it was sticky and chewy and a bit weird for us. and the sauce was not enough to cover a skewer. somehow it tasted a bit bland without the sauce. totally wouldn't try it elsewhere. but if you're adventurous enough, you should try it. some people said that if you were new to japanese traditional dessert, mitarashi dango might be a good start to try (except for anything matcha and those cakes.. they were easily accepted). so if you were on the hike around todaiji area, you could stop by. but if you wanted something else, there were kasugano and le case around kasuga taisha area.