Day of gyoza hopping

I found a day trip deal taking the shinkansen (bullet train) to Utsunomiya, a city known for gyoza (pot stickers). I texted a buddy to ask if she'd be interested, which, of course, she was. I've been to Utsunomiya a couple of times before, but it was her first time there.

I woke up not quite so dark and early, the skies clear but air chilly. I got on the shinkansen without event and my buddy joined me from the next station. We were happily chatting away, catching up. She told me about her trip to Akita, and I told her about my trip to Hokkaido. On the way, we saw a huge cloud of dark smoke and wondered what happened. Later, we learned that the area was doing a controlled reed burning. I'm sure people were busy looking up fires in the area. LOL We were in Utsunomiya before we knew it.

There's this street called Gyoza Street where the street is lined with popular gyoza shops. Three of the top ranking popular shops are on that street and the lines are insane. The most popular shop is minimum hour wait. We saw a couple of people already lined up from before 10am, waiting for the shop to open at 11am. This shop has a system where you take a ticket and you get a notification on your phone when your turn is coming up. There are a few shops that uses this system, which is good when the waiting time is 1-2 hours. There's a statue of a gyoza that has a stand for smartphones to take selfies. Only in Japan, yo. Even the street lamp is shaped as a gyoza. So cute!

The first stop was my favorite gyoza shop, where the wrap is thicker with mochi-like bounciness and the content is juicy, giving more like soup dumpling vibes than gyoza. But they are damn tasty. We were first in line since we got there early and had to wait a few minutes before they opened. The shop filled up quickly just as they opened, which is common for popular gyoza places. We ordered a plate of grilled gyoza and soup gyoza. Unlike other places that serve soup gyoza, the soup isn't seasoned and is just hot water. We add seasoning to our liking. It's a different experience for those who don't know the system in Utsunomiya. The usual seasoning blend is a mix of soy sauce, vinegar, and spicy oil, which is sesame oil with coarsely ground chili peppers.

The second stop, which is another shop that I like, was just a few blocks down the road. They weren't open yet, so we were the first in line again. Like many popular shops in the area, the menu is simple, grilled gyoza, deep-fried gyoza, soup gyoza, and rice. We ordered a plate of grilled and deep-fried gyoza. I really like the spicy oil here. It's mixed with a variety of chili pepper grounds, making the oil spicy and flavorful. I'm not a fan of vinegar, so I only use soy sauce and spicy oil. The plates are six pieces of gyoza that are slightly smaller than others sold at other places. That makes it easier to share and not so filling so we can go to another shop to enjoy more gyoza.

Third stop was a shop I haven't been to before. It wasn't far from where we were and the route took us past the first shop and through the old Showa-era shopping arcade. The map was telling us to go along the riverside promenade. I was like, what promenade? But there was a sign right in front of me saying riverside promenade and friendship falls this way. We came across a bunch of rocks piled up, dry as a desert. Next to the rocks, there was this sign posted saying friendship falls. We looked at each other and agreed that it was the sorriest excuse of falls we've seen.

The walk along the promenade was actually nice. There were small pavilions built across the little stream along the way. There were flowering trees and wisteria along the bank. I'm sure it's lovely when they're in bloom. We came across a shop selling cream puffs and we were like dessert before our next round of gyozas! LOL Yes, the cream puffs were good. We made it to the third stop and ordered a plate of grilled gyoza, spicy gyoza, and shrimp and mayo. The gyoza was good but not as good as the shops we just came from, but the shrimp and mayo was really good.

We went back to Gyoza Street to find another place to try the gyoza. My buddy decided that she wanted to try the most popular shop. The posted waiting time was 60-90 minutes so she got a ticket and we waited. We roamed around the area. We saw that one of the shops posted a sign saying they're done for the day since they ran out of gyoza. It wasn't even 2pm. But then, the shop we were waiting at closed the ticket machine saying that the waiting time got to 6-7 hours, which would be past their closing time. Wow, in a span of an hour or so, the waiting time jumped from 60-90 minutes to 6-7 hours. That pretty much meant that the shop is serving customers non-stop from the time they open to closing time. Now, this shop is well worth the wait and didn't disappoint. The gyoza there is that good.

We headed back to the station to go to the last shop we were going to visit. This shop originated as a miso shop and expanded to serving gyoza with miso sauce. Their gyoza wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as the other shops we've been to, either. There wasn't a line so we got seated right away, but there was a line waiting outside by the time we were finished and left.

This shop is next to a grocery store and was selling strawberries grown locally at a pretty reasonable price. Tochigi, the prefecture where Utsunomiya City is, is famous for strawberries. We both got a pack each of red and white strawberries. White strawberries are a relatively new variety. They may look sour, but they're actually pretty sweet, creamy, and less acidic. We browsed around the supermarket, comparing prices of local produce to the prices of our local supermarkets. We didn't see a huge difference, but they did sell things we don't commonly see, like shark meat. We also browsed around the souvenir shops to pick something up to take to the office.

We ended the day with ice cream before we had to catch the train home.

It was a good day, and we both agreed that the gyoza at my fav gyoza shop was the best out of the shops we visited.

travelogue

 Mar 15