Day trip 20230918 Utsunomiya

Day 3 of my 3-day day trips took me to Utsunomiya, land of gyoza (potstickers). I've been wanting to take the shinkansen (bullet train) and enjoy some good gyoza and I finally got the chance to do that.

I got to the Tokyo Station early, so instead of buying a bento to eat on the short shinkansen ride, I decided to enjoy a bowl of Thai rice porridge. I did, however, splurge on some gourmet cookies to snack on.

I did some internet research as to which gyoza shop to go to and I chose Minmin, since it seemed to be the most popular. Despite getting there before opening time, there was already a long line waiting to get in. We were waiting in a garage so at least I wasn't waiting in the sun. People don't tend to linger over their gyoza, so people were constantly coming and going so the wait wasn't insanely long. 

I tried the pan-fried gyoza and soup gyoza. A unique characteristic of Utsunomiya gyoza is that the soup isn't flavored so people season the broth themselves with soy sauce, vinegar, and spicy sesame oil. I only added the soy sauce and sesame oil. True to the shop's reputation, the gyoza were good. I wanted to try other shops, but the lines were insanely long by the time I left the shop, so I headed back to the station. 

It looked like I took a different route than the one I took on my way to Minmin and came across an old home turned museum. It used to be the home of a soy sauce manufacturer but a lot of the property got destroyed during WWII. The home itself was well-preserved. Man, were the stairs to the second floor steep! I crawled down backwards so not to break my neck going down (so not graceful!). 

There was a gyoza shop that was listed as popular at the station and there wasn't much of a line so I gave the shop a try. I ordered the spicy soup gyoza. The soup was good, but the gyoza itself was underwhelming. It's not a shop I'd want to go to again. 

Since I still had a bit of time before I had to catch the shinkansen back, I roamed around the mall and came across a shop selling custard pudding with soft-serve ice cream stacked on top. I'm sure you can guess what I had for dessert. LOL 

I had a good time and look forward to the next opportunity I get to enjoy more day trips.