Delicious Seasonal Foods! A Visit to Road Station Nankoku Café Resto Furari

Entrance to Café Resto Furari.

  

   Near the Nankoku Interchange can be found the Road Station Nankoku Café Resto Furari, home of a popular Morning Buffet where you can eat tons of fresh vegetables. Furari is registered in “Yasai de Genki-ten PLUS,” a list of shops that provide menu options that prioritize using Kochi local produce.

   The centerpiece of Furari’s Morning Buffet is its selection of seasonal vegetables, primarily sourced from Nankoku City and other Kochi Prefecture locations. The best Nankoku vegetables include eggplant, okra, shishito peppers, and sweet tomatoes. The Eggplant Tataki is one of the café’s most popular dishes. Another specialty, homemade bread baked right in the restaurant, is so popular that on weekends the supplies run out before the buffet closes!

 

A buffet full of delicious vegetable dishes.

   On the day our reporters visited the buffet, the menu included dishes such as nappa cabbage with kimchi, happosai (eight simmered vegetables), pot-au-feu, vegetable tempura, fried chicken with tomato sauce, and Nankoku Furari Gratin. The richly varied assortment of about 20 dishes changes every two weeks. The menu always includes a selection of soups, rice dishes (using Nankoku-grown Koshi-Hikari rice), salad, and dessert, as well as free refills on soft drinks.

   Reporter “C” tried both the Furari Special Fried Rice and the Katsuo Rice, and would recommend both of them, as well as the apple gelatin dessert. Reporter “I” recommends the countrystyle simmered eggplant and the homemade bread. Both reporters went back for seconds (and thirds)!

 

   The Morning Buffet is popular not just with travelers stopping for a rest, but with local people as well. On the weekends, many families visit to fill their bellies with the healthy food.

 

   Also, on Tuesdays, when Café Furari is closed, Farmhouse Restaurant Mahoroba Batake opens for a lunch buffet. This farmhouse restaurant is run by farmer women from Nankoku City. Five groups of women take turns to manage the restaurant, making all the food by hand with Nankoku local produce as the main ingredients. It is so popular that customers have to enter and leave in three waves, one every 60 minutes. Customers enjoy the local household cuisine, handmade by local women.

   When you eat these dishes, with their nutritious vegetables harvested in lovely Kochi, you will remember how vegetables are supposed to taste—and probably like to eat them more! Try these two restaurants, and sample the flavors of Kochi.

 

Road Station Nankoku Café Resto Furari ——————————————————

Eat as much as you want!

Location: Nankoku City, Soyama 102-1 Road Station Nankoku Furari 2nd Floor
Phone: 088-880-8112 (Office)
Operating Hours (Morning Buffet): 8:00~10:45 (Last Entry 10:30)
Fee: Adult (7 and over) ¥780, Child (6 and under) ¥410, 3 and under Free
Closed: Tuesdays (open on Golden Week holidays); Dec 31~Jan. 1
Website: http://furari.com/index.htm

 

 

Farmhouse Restaurant Mahoroba Batake ——————————————————

Location: Same as above
Reservations/Questions: 088-880-6559 (Nankoku City Hall Division of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries)
Operating Hours: 10:50~14:10 (Customers enter at 10:50, 12:00, and 13:10 for a limit of one hour. Tickets for each entering time go on sale at 10:30.)
Fee: Adult (Junior High School students and above) ¥1000, Elementary School students ¥700, preschool students age 3 and up ¥300, under 3 Free
Operating Day: Tuesday (prior confirmations required)
Website: http://www.city.nankoku.lg.jp/life/life_dtl.php?hdnKey=2461