201503 Tokyo-Izu Peninsula Road Trip Day 8

Heda

I knew about Heda while watching an Izu Peninsula travel program on Japan Hour. Japan Hour is a long running TV program in Singapore, introducing Japan’s culture, food and sights on a weekly basis. I had gotten many places of interest and food ideas from this TV program for my Japan travel.

What’s so special about this sleepy little fishing town on the west of Izu Peninsula?

Heda is Japan’s main fishing grounds in Suruga Bay for catching Spider Crab, the world’s biggest crab. How could we not visit when we were touring Izu Peninsula right? Heda being quite remote is best accessed by a rental car as the buses from Shuzenji are rather infrequent. Besides Spider Crab, the view of Suruga Bay and Mount Fuji from Heda was supposed to be really beautiful. We didn’t have the luck of getting the good view, but we made up for it with a special lunch!

Eating Spider crab was one of the highlights of our Izu Peninsula road trip. There were many restaurants at Heda serving Spider Crab, but we didn’t know which one to choose. I didn’t have the name or address of the restaurant shown on the Japan Hour program but I remembered how the restaurant looked. So began my search for that particular restaurant.

 

さかなや魚清

Address: 580 Heda, Numazu, Shizuoka 410-3402, Japan
Tel: +81558942114
Website: http://www.sakanayauosei.jp/

According to Google Translate, さかなや魚清 is pronounced as “Sakana ya Uokiyo” or in English “Fish Shop Uokiyo”. We took a peek from the windows before we headed in as I needed to be sure it was the right restaurant. I saw the big Spider Crab pond which was the same as what I saw on the Japan Hour program. What a way to recognise a place!

On the program, the TV guests ordered fish set meals which came with 1 Spider Crab leg. We were there for the Spider Crab and felt the fish set meals would not satisfy us.

On the menu, there were 3 options for the Spider Crab – small, medium and large. For the small Spider Crab, it was JPY16,000 (~SGD185) and JPY19,000 (~SGD220) for medium Spider Crab. I can’t recall how much for the large, but it should be around JPY22,000-JPY25,000 (SGD250-SGD280). (Do note the SGD equivalent was based on the SGD/JPY exchange rate at that time back in 2015)

Decisions, decisions, decisions

SY and I were deciding between the small and medium Spider Crabs; the price difference was JPY3,000 (about SGD35). SY said since we came all the way to Heda and it wasn’t easy to get there, we should eat our fill with the medium Spider Crab! I of course readily agreed!

We placed our order for the medium Spider Crab and the restaurant owner started looking for a suitable candidate in the Spider Crab pond. At first he offered us a Spider Crab that was missing 1 leg, which we declined. We didn’t want to have to fight over who got the last leg! 🤣

Finally he picked one out from the pond that we agreed on. We definitely had to do a photo shoot with the chosen Spider Crab before it was brought to the kitchen!

 

The Spider Crab Meal

We were asked how we wanted the Spider Crab prepared. There were 3 choices – Boiled, Grilled and Sashimi. We decided to do all 3 – 2 legs grilled, 4 legs as sashimi and the balance 2 legs plus body boiled. We eagerly awaited our Spider Crab lunch.

In our eagerness to eat Spider Crab, we missed out the description in the menu that the meal came with other dishes too! First were some appetisers including a turban shell. We thought – oh that’s a nice start to the meal.

Next came this super big platter of fresh sashimi! We were flabbergasted! There were about 9-10 types of thickly cut sashimi and we started wondering how to finish the whole meal. We tried to eat as much of the sashimi as possible, not wanting to waste food but at the same time didn’t want to leave no space for Spider Crab. In the end, we sadly had to leave some sashimi behind. 😔

Our Spider Crab

The grilled Spider Crab legs were first to be served, next the Spider Crab sashimi, followed by the boiled Spider Crab legs and body. SY and I agreed boiled Spider Crab was the best as it brought out the sweetness of the Spider Crab flesh. The crab miso was outstanding and we happily dipped the boiled flesh to soak up the crab miso. We even dipped some seafood sashimi in the crab miso too! 😋

As for the grilled Spider Crab legs, the flesh felt a little dried out from the grilling. We had thought the sashimi Spider Crab legs would have been the best but surprisingly the sashimi flesh didn’t taste as sweet as the boiled flesh. Nonetheless, we finished every bit of the Spider Crab. 😋

“Unexpected Surprises”

We thought that was the end of the meal after we were done eating the Spider Crab. To our surprise, the restaurant owners served us rice, soup and pickles next. I ended up finishing the rice as it was so good. Then came another surprise, we were asked for our choice of coffee or tea. (It really shows you that we weren’t paying much attention to what was listed on the set menu except for the size and price of the Spider Crab!) I don’t normally drink coffee, but the coffee smelled so good so I went along with SY’s choice of coffee. It was quite a delicious coffee to finish up the meal.

 

Which size Spider Crab set meal to choose?

If you’re wondering which size Spider Crab you should choose when you visit さかなや魚清 in Heda:

• 

  The medium Spider Crab set meal could easily feed 4 persons. There was a couple next to us and they had the small Spider Crab set meal. On the other side of our table, was a family of 6 who also had the medium Spider Crab set meal. Guess they weren’t as greedy as us.

• The appetisers, rice and coffee served were dependent on the number of persons and not charged per person. All the items were included in the price of the Spider Crab set meal. But I guess one can’t be ordering a small Spider Crab and expect 6 sets of appetisers, rice, soup and coffee.
• The sashimi platters were standard size according to the size of Spider Crab chosen. So for the large Spider Crab, the sashimi platter would be bigger than what we got. While the small Spider Crab meal would get a smaller sashimi platter.

Do note that this might be different in other Heda Spider Crab restaurants, but I think it won’t be too far off from the above. The best way to eat Spider Crab is to have them boiled; we noticed the other tables had boiled Spider Crabs too. It brought out the sweetness of the flesh and you’d get mouthwatering crab miso to boot. 😋

 

Stroll around Heda

With such a big full meal, there was no way I could immediately drive to our next destination. As the weather wasn’t good, we just walked around the port of Heda to aid the digestion.

We came across this little building filled with Spider Crab shell art and had some fun taking photos with them. SY had a little fun posing with a Spider Crab art mask. I read online that the ones sold for food were not the gigantic ones as Spider Crabs could grow up to 3 metres long, leg to leg stretched out!

After our tummies didn’t feel so heavy and with the weather looking worse, we decided it was time to move on to Shuzenji.

Next: Shuzenji

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