Lunch? What Lunch?
We never really had lunch in Matsushima. Instead, we snacked our way along the waterfront between the bay cruise, Entsuin and the Fukuura Bridge. Matsushima’s main road by the pier is basically one long row of food stalls, so this was very easy to do.
Gyutan, Two Ways
Sendai’s thing is gyutan (grilled beef tongue), and Matsushima is close enough to Sendai to have it everywhere. First stop, right off the boat: a curry pan stall with a gyutan curry pan, which is exactly what it sounds like, a deep-fried curry bun with beef tongue inside.
A few stalls down, a seafood stall was grilling octopus, oysters, scallops, whelks and gyutan skewers. We went for the gyutan skewer, which we ate walking up to Entsuin.
Grill-Your-Own Sasakamaboko
After Entsuin, we found the best activity in Matsushima: grilling your own sasakamaboko. Sasakamaboko is Sendai’s other famous food, a fish cake shaped like a bamboo leaf (sasa). Here you get a raw one on a stick, and you grill it yourself over a big charcoal grill, turning it till it puffs up and goes golden.
Fresh off the grill, it’s hot, a little smoky, and way better than the cold ones in a packet. This is a must-do, especially with kids (or with an adult who likes playing with fire).
Salty Milk Gelato
Right there was a gelato counter with local flavours, including salty milk made with Shiogama moshio, a seaweed salt from the next town over. Yes, it was January. Yes, we had ice cream.
Oysters and the Fish Market
Matsushima is famous for oysters, and winter is the season. We had a couple of big ones on the half shell, then wandered into the Matsushima Fish Market (Matsushima Sakana Ichiba), with its tanks of live seafood downstairs and a food court.
And to finish off the “not lunch”, two beef bowls.
Full, finally. Time to walk it off across the red bridge to Fukuurajima!
Information About the Matsushima Fish Market
We never sat down for lunch. We just ate our way down the waterfront: gyutan, fish cake we grilled ourselves, gelato, oysters, then a beef bowl to finish.