Local Foods

Perhaps the best tasting food in Aizu is rice. Some people may question whether rice has any taste at all: we wish you would try it and see. If the rice is good, then the sake made out of it will also be good. Aizu is blessed with fine water and rice, as well as a cold climate, providing all the necessary ingredients for making sake. The region has long been known as an outstanding sake-brewing area.
Another famous product made from rice is the delicious miso (soybean paste). In addition to miso soup, visitors should try dengaku, which are skewers of tofu, mochi (rice balls), and so on. Dengaku are coated with Aizu's special miso and then grilled over charcoal.
Seasonal Aizu products include various kinds of edible mountain plants, as well as autumn persimmons known as mishirazu-gaki. When fresh in the spring and autumn, the fruits are delicious served as tempura, or boiled and flavored with soy sauce; in other seasons, they are eaten pickled in salt. Mishirazu-gaki are gathered in the autumn and placed in shochu (distilled Japanese liquor), to remove their astringency. The process gives this popular product a special sweet flavor.
Cuisine featuring ayu (sweetfish), iwana (char), carp, and fresh-water smelt, caught in local lakes and rivers, also enjoy a wonderful reputation. Seafood products, such as herring pickled in malt, dried cod sticks, and kozuyu, a soup made from dried shellfish, are other special features of Aizu. Recently, Kitakata ramen is very popular among tourists.