Lunch at “Fuku no Hana” in Kayaba-cho after seeing a doctor

Good day.
Thank you very much for visiting this blog.
Today I’d like to introduce a restaurant, “Fuku no Hana” in Kayaba-cho.

This is my own (the manager’s) article after 2 weeks.
I was going to write earlier, but I had been having difficulties finding things to write for a while because the shops I wanted to research were closed or full when I tried to visit, or my mental and physical health was not good.

I could buy something and drink at home instead, but I hesitated to choose such a boring topic because other articles written by other writers were active and interesting every time.
Meanwhile, I had chances to eat outside and go out for drinking before a big holiday, so I finally got something to write.

Anyway, my report starts now.

Contents

After the appointment at dental clinic

The day was a Friday before the holidays in July, which was Friday the 13th.
It is said to be an ominous day on which Jesus Christ suffered death on the cross, but the Bible only says it was “Friday”.
I have heard that “13” comes from the number of people who attended the Last Supper.
On this Friday the 13th, I came to a clinic in Kayaba-cho which often appears in this blog in lunch break.

I have already written some times that I was going to the dentist because of teeth ache.
On the day, the treatment was going to finish if the condition was ok.

By the way, the reason why my teeth started to ache was not teeth decay.
It was because too much brushing made my gums squeeze down.

I didn’t know before that if you brush teeth and gums too strongly, gums decrease and the teeth expose too much, which makes the pain.
What scared me more was that shaved gums don’t recover.

Did you know that?
I was trying hard to brush between gums and teeth well to prevent the decay, but it led a bad result unexpectedly…. I recommend you to care your gums gently.

I had plastic filling for replacement, and the later condition was ok, so the treatment finished on the day.

After I finished payment and left the clinic, I decided to have lunch somewhere.
I remembered a restaurant “Fujiro” where I visited in March and enjoyed very nice pork cutlet with salt.
I wanted to try their special hashed beef and rice, so I went to Fujiro to have it.

They were closed.
According to their website, they stopped the service of lunch in May.
Too bad!

“Fuku no Hana” and “Fuku no Tori”

While I was thinking where to go, I remembered that I went to “Fuku no Tori” while I was waiting for my blood test’s result for treatment of gout about a year ago.
I also remembered that there was another restaurant of a similar name in the next which looked like a same company’s shop.
I thought that it would be interesting to see its sister store, and visited “Fuku no Hana” on the day.

This photo below is “Fuku no Hana” which I introduce you today, and “Fuku no Tori” which I visited last time.

The two restaurants stand side by side.
“Fuku no Tori” was on the ground floor, and “Fuku no Hana” was on B1.
I went down the stairs to “Fuku no Hana” in the next photo.

The interior was designed like an old Japanese traditional house.
Glossy wooden frames were put in clayey wall like windows.
The atmosphere was very calm and comfortable.

I checked both restaurants on the internet later, and found that they were officially sister stores.
While “Fuku no Tori” does chicken dishes of Choshu-Dori (a brand of chicken made in Yamaguchi Prefecture) as their main menu, “Fuku no Hana” serves various local foods and sake of Yamaguchi Prefecture.
“Fuku no Tori” was like a typical casual Izakaya restaurant, the interior of “Fuku no Hana” looked higher grade.

Steamed chicken breast and vegetables in Seiro

The next photo is the lunch menu which I found at the entrance of “Fuku no Hana”.

There were various types of lunch meals on the board.
I was guided to a counter seat, and looked into the menu book again.

I usually order Kara-age (Japanese deep fried chicken) meal to compare Kara-age of different restaurants and write about it in this blog.
However, I hesitated to take it on that day because I was going to go out for drinking with my ex-senior colleague at night.
Every time I go out with him, we always drunk and ate too much, so I wanted to have a light meal for lunch on that day.

From that point of view, I thought that “Steamed chicken and vegetables in Seiro (basket steamer)” was light and healthy.
I told a staff my order, and then he asked me, “Which would you like, chicken leg or breast?”.
I chose chicken breast.

Chicken breast has less fat than leg.
I’d heard that it contains much amount of a nutrition called “imidazole dipeptide” which is good for fatigue recovery.

One of the most famous healthy dish made with chicken breast is “salad chicken (boiled and seasoned chicken breast)”.
I usually have instant noodles with crumbed salad chicken from Seven Eleven for lunch.
It is only 477 kcal (391kcal + 86kcal) in total, and 596 yen (398yen + 198 yen)!!

I’m told to limit daily intake calorie under 1700kcal by my doctor.
This lunch is not only good in the nutrient balance, but also it’s big in volume and very filling.
It can be said more than perfect for me!
And maybe thanks to “Imidazole dipeptide”, I don’t get too tired recently (I feel so) ^^;

By the way, the instant vegetable noodles was 345kcal until a few months ago.
The quality was “improved” to make the taste thicker and deeper, and it became 50kcal more than before.
It’s a little bit hard to understand why it became higher that much.

In addition, I could choose the sauce for the meal.
There were 2 choices; Ponzu vinegar (soy sauce based sauce with citrus vinegar) and spicy miso sauce.
I was actually had been tired of Ponzu because I used it for salad I had at every meal, so I chose spicy miso sauce.

While I was waiting for the food to come, I checked the menu book.
“Fuku no Hana” was a restaurant of “Yamaguchi’s foods and sake”, as expected they had many Yamaguchi’s local Nihonshu, such as “Otokoyama” “Takarabune”, “Santouka”, “Yamazaru”, “Harada”, “Chomonkyo”, “Taka”, “Gangi”, “Miyoshi”, “Gokyo”, and “Dassai”.

After a while,

The meal arrived!
In the basket,

There were many kinds of vegetables such as Chinese cabbage, carrot, Shimeji mushroom, Mizuna leaves (potherb mustard), and bean sprouts.
It looked so filling!

I started it from Chinese cabbage.
I had it with the miso sauce.

It was nice!
The cabbage was cooked perfectly with appropriate moisture, not too soft.

I had the chicken next.

The chicken had little fat, but it wasn’t dry.
It was soft and moist.
When I chewed it, I could feel the good flavor of the chicken well.

The miso sauce was not only spicy.
The miso was sweet, and it had garlic flavor.
It kept the chicken’s flavor as it was, and at the same time, it added new taste to it sharpening my appetite.
Another thing about this miso sauce was,

that it was great with white rice.
I felt that I could eat many bowls of rice with the miso (I didn’t do it for my health).

Hagi Inoue no Shiso Wakame

On the tray, there were a basket of steamed foods, salad, rice, miso soup, and a bag of something like Furikake (flakes for seasoning rice).

It had a name, “Hagi Inoue no Shiso Wakame”, on the bag (“Shiso” is Japanese basil/Perilla, and “Wakame” is a kind of seaweed).
I see “Yukari (dried and seasoned Shiso powder)” at supermarkets, and it’s one of typical Furikake.
It was my first time to see “Shiso Wakame” Furikake.
It might have been because I had no TV at home and had less chance to know new things…?

I thought that “Shiso” and “Wakame” would be a good combination, so I tried the Furikake on my rice.

It was salty and sweet, and the flavor of Shiso spread in my mouth.
It was delicious.
This one was also something which made me feel like eating rice more (I didn’t do it, though).

I checked this product on the internet when I was writing this article
I found that it was one of main products of a company, “Inoue Shoten”, in Hagi City, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
It said that it’s popular among men and woman, old and young, and it was also on the website of Hagi City’s tourist association.
It was delicious and understandable that it was popular.

Conclusion

What I impressed me about the restaurant was that they were trying to express their concept, “Yamaguchi’s local food and sake”, in details.
I could see the manager’s hospitality and ideas clearly from the services.

I could feel the concept from everything at “Fuku no Tori” which is the sister store I visited last year as well.
I found that the manager of those restaurants emphasizes on an essential and basic thing about management which is telling their customers their ideas radically.

Their website said that their shops are increasing.
Their management entertains the visitors a lot, so their expansion was understandable enough.

Even though I haven’t been to that many restaurants so far, I find that a restaurant which has one strong concept and produce products and services according to it, succeeds, while one which has blurred concept and can’t express their ideas in their services for the customers often doesn’t go well.

Today we have so many good products and services in our world.
Among many competitors, the point to catch people’s attention I think is that how well the shop can tell about itself, and how good it is to people.

When I was working as a sales person at a stock company, my boss said to me, “Stocks and investment trusts are the most unnecessary products in this world, and the actual contents don’t differ by who to buy from. Then, what is the reason why the customer buys stocks or investment services from a certain sales person?”.
He said, “That’s because the customer likes you.”
The reason why a customer chooses a certain service is not a logic, but it’s about human feelings.

Indeed, a customer who I made a contract with on a phone (I suddenly called the person for the first time, and made a contract of an investment trust of one million yen on the phone. Such a business should not be acceptable today any more^^;) said that I sounded like a person who would never betray.

When I took a license of Small and Medium Enterprise Management Consultant, I learnt many difficult words and methods about business administration.
However, such difficult things are just a part of the things.
The actual part of people’s buying behaviors come from abstract feelings that they like it.

Now many works have started to be done by AI.
It is even more important to promote yourself, and make the customer like you, to succeed in your business.
Who buys something is always human, and what chooses which to buy is emotion, not a logic.

I thought such things seeing “Fuku no Hana” and “Fuku no Tori”.
Apart from their management, the foods of both restaurants were very good, and the atmosphere was so comfortable as well.
I’d like to visit in night time again to try their sake and foods (I always think the same thing every time, but I have rarely made it^^;).