This charming town on the Sea of Japan coast is a great place to dive into a local culinary culture without massive tourist crowds.

By now, there are certain parts of Japan that just about any traveler knows are famous for certain types of food, such as Kobe for beef, Hokkaido for sea urchin, and Osaka for takoyaki. But part of what makes Japan such a great place to explore is that there are always other hidden gems off the beaten tourist path, and today we’re taking a trip to a lesser-known culinary culture destination, the town of Murakami in Niigata Prefecture.

For many foodies, rice is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Niigata, as it’s where the prized Koshihikari strain of the grain is grown. Murakami, though, is all about salmon.

Murakami is located on the coast of the sea of Japan, and the river which flows through the town is also a salmon run waterway. Salmon are deeply engrained in the local way of life, and the locals’ respect and gratitude towards the fish is so great that it’s said that Murakami has over 100 different salmon recipes, so that as much of the fish as possible can be eaten and only the bare minimum thrown away.

▼ Salmon drying in Murakami

It’d take far more than a single visit to Murakami to sample all of its salmon specialties, but we still wanted to try as many as we could fit into or schedule/stomach, so we headed to Kikkawa Izutsuya, a Murakami restaurant that offers multi-course salmon meals.

▼ Kikkawa Izutsuya

As you might imagine, though, Kikkawa, which is only open for lunch, tends to fill up with reservations pretty quickly, and unfortunately we’d rolled up without having arranged for a table. This didn’t turn out to be a major problem, though. The restaurant doesn’t start serving customers until 11 a.m., but at 9:30 they start a waiting list for non-reserved tables for the day. After giving them our name they told us the approximate estimated time for when they’d be able to seat us, and while it was several hours away, this meant that instead of having to stand in line, we could go explore the town.

The neighborhood around Kikkawa Izutsuya has some very picturesque machiya (traditional townhouse) architecture, and even amongst the buildings that don’t have the look of Edo-period shopfronts there are some with the cool retro atmosphere of two or three generations ago. Since we had a while to go before our Kikkawa Izutsuya seating, we went cruising for breakfast, and found it at a place called Echigo Iwafuneya.

▼ The walk from Kikkawa Izutsuya to Echigo Iwafuneya

Full disclosure: Echigo Iwafuneya is a sweets shop. While we’re being honest, though, we should also say that we have very few qualms about eating sweets for breakfast while we’re traveling, especially when the glazed dango mochi dumplings look like this (and yes, they tasted as good as they looked).

▼ Plus Echigo Iwafuneya has an eat-in area, so in our book it counts as a proper restaurant.

By the way, the “Kikkawa” part of the name of the Kikkawa Izutsuya restaurant we were waiting to eat at refers to its parent company, which sells dried salmon, salmon roe, and other salmon-related foodstuffs. Aside from the restaurant, Kikkawa’s main store is also located in the area, and is worth a visit even if you’re not planning to buy anything.

▼ Echigo Iwafuneya to Kikkawa main store

▼ Kikkawa main store

Not only does the building look extremely cool from the outside, inside you’ll see…

…just how much dried salmon they produce!

You might expect the…bouquet of that much fish to be unbearable, but there’s also a strong aroma of salt, since it’s used in generous amounts as part of Murakami’s local drying process. After being left salted for roughly a week, the salmon is rinsed and hung up to dry, with the best results said to come from salmon that dries in the cold winter wind.

We still had time to spare before our Kikkawa Izutsuya seating, so next we strolled down Murakami’s Kurobei-dori, or “Black Wall Street,” so named for the classically styled dark wooden panels at the edges of the properties on either side.

▼ Kurobei-dori is found near Anzenji Temple (walking route from Kikkawa main store to Anzenji shown)

As further proof of how much Murakami loves salmon, on the north side of the town you’ll find Murakami Salmon Park…

…and inside the park is the Murakami salmon museum!

▼ Anzenji Temple to salmon museum

Inside are all sorts of exhibits about the life of salmon and their importance to the local community. Not only are there a recreation of a traditional fisherman’s dwelling and salmon-inhabited aquarium tanks, there’s also a window that looks directly out into the river that’s adjacent to the park, so if you come during the salmon run season (late fall/early winter), you can see them swimming upstream on their return to their birthplaces.

Visiting the salmon museum (which is officially called the Iyoboya Kaikan) filled us with both an admiration and hunger for salmon…and luckily it was now time for us to head back to Kikkawa Izutsuya for our long-awaited meal!

As the bilingual explanatory sheet shows, nothing is wasted in Murakami salmon cuisine. Kikkawa Izutsuya offers salmon meals with eight to twenty-two different dishes, and we opted for the 11-dish set, for 4,048 yen (US$28).

Coming first to our table were sake-marinated dried salmon, a salmon temari sushi ball, and winter wind-dried salmon milt (pictured clockwise from right in the above photo). The dried salmon in particular was full of flavor, but we didn’t have too long to get lost in reverie since the waitstaff next set a shichirin grill down in front of us with breaded strips of sake-marinated salmon skin cooking on it. They curled as they heated, and when we popped one into our mouth, it was delightfully crunchy.

Next we were presented with dishes of stewed kabuto (salmon head), grilled pickled salmon, and miso-stewed salmon roe, arranged left to right in the picture below.

All of the above items are also part of the eight-dish course meal, but upgrading to the 11-item one also got us simmered salmon milt, salmon sashimi, and kombu (kelp)-wrapped salmon, lined up top to bottom on the right side of this shot.

While no dish alone was a huge portion, the number of different items meant that we had plenty to eat, avoiding the feast-for-the-eyes-but-not-so-much-for-the-stomach problem presented at some fancy restaurants, especially since we also had the star of the show…

…the grilled dried salmon, which was fantastic.

This is also part of the basic eight-dish set, and in addition to eating it by itself, we highly recommend eating some ochazuke-style, as a topping for a bowl of white rice and green tea.

So with 11 Murakami salmon dishes down, but still about 90 more to go, we’ve got a lot of reasons to visit the town again next time we’re craving fish.

Location information
Kikkawa Izutsuya / きっかわ 井筒屋
Address: Niigata-ken, Murakami-shi, Komachi 1-12
新潟県村上市小町１−１２
Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Website

Iyoboya Kaikan / イヨボヤ会館
Address: Niigata-ken, Murakami-shi, Shiomachi 13-34
新潟県村上市塩町13-34
Open 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Website

Iyoboya Kaikan interior photos: Murakami Tourism Association
All other photos ©SoraNews24
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