Hello fellow hungry Ibarakians! Happy Marine Day and Sports Day! Four day weekend yay!
We were supposed to have the Olympics this week but corona put a stop to that. I am sure you are all wondering about what to do and what to eat this long weekend. May I suggest a Beer Garden?
Summers can be gruelingly hot in Japan. The humidity here is out of control and the sun is blazing. You need something to cool you down, a nice tall glass of cold beer should do it. But because of the current pandemic, we can't just hop into our local izakaya. Izakayas are usually small crowded spaces with little ventilation which is a big no no these days. This is the time to have drinks outside in the nice cool evening air. That is what beer gardens are all about.
Beer time!
For those of you who do not know what a Beer Garden is, after reading the name you must be thinking of a garden filled with beer and a small stream of beer where you can dip your glass into. It is nothing like that, but there is an endless amount of beer involved, with a time limit. Beer gardens are typically in an outside area and hosted by hotels, wedding halls or restaurants. They are in a garden, on a roof top or sometimes in a parking lot. There are a lot of beer gardens around Ibaraki this summer and I think this is a perfect place to meet up with friends. You are outside and you have distance from the other patrons, so there is a smaller risk than going to an izakaya or bar. There is still a risk though, so please wear a mask.
Beer Garden at the Hotel Crystal Palace!
I recently went to a Beer Garden in Hitachinaka city at the Hotel Crystal Palace . I was expecting the usual, 90 minute 飲み補題 nomihodai (all you can drink), and some food that you can order with friends. The typical Beer Garden food is french fries, fried chicken, yakisoba and some other kind of meat. What I found at the Crystal Palace Beer Garden is that the food menu comes in courses. My wife ended up picking the course. I wasn't really sure what was going to come but at the end of the night, I was extremely satisfied with her choice.
I went with my wife and a few friends for one of our friend's birthday celebration. The Hotel Crystal Palace has three different places where they hold their Beer Garden. We chose the Aqua Garden area. That place is usually used for wedding parties so I thought it would be a nice area, and nice it was. It was a wide garden area with bars, picnic tables, a small waterfall and a lot of trees. There was a nice cool breeze blowing around the garden which felt nice. This was the perfect atmosphere for a Beer Garden, but then I felt it, the bane of my existence, a mosquito bite. The outside garden area has a lot of mosquitoes and I was kicking myself from not bringing mosquito spray. Fortunately, the restaurant provided me with mosquito spray which they provide for all their customers. After spraying my arms and legs, I thanked the staff profusely and then found our picnic table.
Once we sat down, it was drinking time. We had to go to the near by outside bar to get our drinks. We started with beer of course and said our 乾杯! Kanpai (cheers) to start our 90 minute all you can drink. The server then brought us our BBQ grill.
At this Beer Garden, you are expected to grill your own meat and vegetables which was fine by me. My wife had ordered the Kamayaki Pizza and BBQ set. It brought a meat dish, a seafood dish and a vegetable dish. Plus salad, yakisoba and pizza. The grill was huge and burning hot. Let's get grilling!!
The meat!
The meat dish consisted of chicken wings, tandori chicken, strips of steak and a very long piece of bacon. All of the meat was fantastic. Grilling it was a lot of fun, even though it felt like I was grilling on the surface of a volcano. The meat also brought some BBQ sauce. The sauce was OK in my opinion, it was too weak for those delicious strips of steak. Out of everything, I have to say the tanodri chicken was my favorite. It was very juicy and filled with flavor. I highly recommend it. Now comes the seafood.
The seafood!
The seafood dish came with two huge shrimps, octopus, squid and my personal favorite scallops. A lot of scallops, I was so happy to have gotten as many as we did. Everything was very delicious, especially the scallops. While I was grilling all that seafood, it brought back happy memories of me grilling lobster and shrimp back in Miami. All of the seafood was great but the scallops were the best. Last but not least came the vegetables. By the way, did I mention how great the scallops were?
The vegetables!
The vegetable dish brought three potatoes, three onions, asparagus, paprika, mushrooms, eggplant and corn. The was also some mini tomatoes wrapped in bacon and asparagus wrapped in bacon. The potatoes took a little while to grill but all the vegetables came out tasting great with the meat. The bacon wrapped vegetables were amazing but heed my warming about the mini tomatoes. I bit into one after I finished grilling it and the tomato exploded delicious hot magma in my mouth. I was really glad I had a beer in hand to cool my mouth down. This was a lot of food but our food adventure wasn't over yet. Let me tell you about the food we got that wasn't for grilling.
Delightful small salad
Before we started grilling, we were given these small salads that were delicious. It had your basic salad vegetables but with one piece of prosciutto wrapped like a flower. It was a great combination with the salad. But that wasn't the only thing that was wrapped like a flower, they did that with the avocado too! I don't know how they wrapped the avocado so elegantly like that but it was great. Everything in the salad was fantastic. But wait! I am still not done with the food.
Margarita Pizza
Another food item that came with our course was pizza! The course comes with tuna and corn pizza but my wife decided to change it to margarita pizza instead which the Beer Garden said was OK. The pizza wasn't bad, it reminded me of Izakaya pizza. It was a nice little edition. But wait! There's more.
Yakisoba
We also got yakisoba with our course. I am always up for eating yakisoba but I have to say, I wasn't very impressed by this yakisoba. It didn't have that great yakisoba flavor that I have come to love. I think there was way too many vegetables in the yakisoba and barely any noodles. The vegetables were good though. At this point I was pretty full but our food still wasn't done!
Katsuo no warayaki!
OK, full disclosure, the other food I am about to talk about does not come with the set course. We had a hook up at this beer garden and we were able to try different dishes that day. One of those dishes was Katsuo no warayaki. Katsuo or Skipjack Tuna or bonito (this fish has a lot of names) is really good. The outside of the fish is cooked with ginger and soy sauce while leaving the inside of the fish raw. Katsuo is kind of like the roast beef of fish, I really do recommend trying this while you are in Japan and especially at this Beer Garden. It was fantastic with the ginger and negi.
Fukahire Ramen
Fukahire is shark fin in English and even though I am not really for eating shark fin, this shark fin ramen was really good. It was way better than the yakisoba that came with the course. The shrimp was excellent as well. This again, is not part of the course but it was quite tasty.
Mojito!
While getting my fourth drink, I found that the bar does make mojitos but it is not part of the nomihodai menu. I would have to pay an extra 600 yen for it. This beer garden gives you tickets that you can use to buy other menu items outside of your course. The tickets amounted up to 1500 yen. I used those tickets to buy the mojito. If you remember my post about tacos in Toride, I talk about how I come from a Cuban family and I judge mojitos harshly. This Beer Garden's mojito...was not bad. It isn't the best mojito I have had in Japan but it wasn't bad at all. I was impressed so I give it three stars out of five. Give their mojitos a shot when you want to take a break from beer.
Night fell, we were extremely full and our 90 minutes were almost up. But we still had dessert coming and a birthday cake for my friend to go. The birthday cake was amazing but not as amazing as the small dessert we got with the cake.
Creme Brulee
Everyone at our table got a small cup of creme brulee. This was also not part of our course but I am glad I got to try it. It was your typical creme brulee, hard sugary top with soft creamy inside. What more can you ask for from this great dessert.
After we finished our dessert, our time was up and we were so full we couldn't move. We had to move though, because it was time to go. I asked my wife what the damage was, I was pretty sure we were going to have to shell out a lot of yen. She then explained that the nomihodai was 1500 yen each person. Not bad, but how about the food? She then looked at the check, excluding the extra stuff we ordered, it was 7000 yen. "7000 yen each right?" I said. She shook her head and said "together." I was in shock, the course brought a lot of food and we were five people. So we each had to pay around 1500 yen for the course. This is one of the cheapest beer gardens I have ever been to. We paid, thanked the staff for the delicious food and promised them that we would definitely be back.
I really did enjoy my time at this Beer Garden and I am hoping to go back before the summer is over. Beer Gardens are a great way to meet friends and have a drink during these troubled times. There is most likely a Beer Garden near you. I can tell you from what I know. There is a Beer Garden at:
Tsuchiura Station
Okura Hotel in Tsukuba
Hawaiian Beer Garden at Mito Station
I hope you are able to enjoy a nice glass of beer at any of these Beer Gardens this long weekend or any time during the summer. I have been to the Tsuchiura station and Mito Station Beer Gardens before and have really enjoyed my time there. But I think the Hotel Crystal Palace Beer Garden is great. It isn't too pricey and the food is exquisite. If you do decide to try the Crystal Palace Beer Garden, I suggest going on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The Beer Garden has two guitar players who come in and play relaxing jazz music while you drink. They played the happy birthday song for my friend when her cake came out. If you would like to check out the video of them playing at the Beer Garden, I uploaded the video to my Facebook page. Here is the link:
So go out this weekend, grab a beer with friends and enjoy the sounds of jazz guitar at the Hotel Crystal Palace. 1500 yen for 90 minute nomihodai isn't too bad right? Who knows, you might see me grilling more delicious meat while holding a beer in one hand and tongs in the other.
Enjoy!
For more information on the Hotel Crystal Palace Beer Garden, check out their website in the link below. For my non-Japanese speakers, sorry to say the website is all in Japanese. If you do plan to try out this amazing Beer Garden, please call the Hotel Crystal Palace and make a reservation ahead of time.
Some extra news for my fellow Ibarakians near Mito. Mito is having a meat festival this weekend if you would like to check that out. I went to the meat festival a few years ago and had a great time. Beer and meat are a perfect combination to a great day.
For more information, check out their Facebook page below:
Comments