Enjoying Lunch at Solene Shunan's Local Production for Local Consumption Restaurant, Bakery Kitchen Sai

Hello, I'm Ryu, a citizen reporter for Shunan City.
This time, I visited the famous roadside station Solene Shunan in Tonda, Shunan City, after learning that it has a local production for local consumption restaurant where you can enjoy lunches made with regional ingredients.
Solene Shunan is a place I like and often stop by when driving, but I had never eaten at the restaurant, so I became interested and decided to go.

Bakery Kitchen Sai, a local production for local consumption restaurant located right next to the souvenir shop at Solene Shunan, was founded around 2014. As the name 'Sai' (Vegetable) suggests, it is a restaurant where you can enjoy healthy cuisine using various ingredients such as delicious local vegetables, curated by Mikiko Nishikawa, a senior professional vegetable sommelier.

Personally, I found the wooden rhinoceros statue holding a sign in front of the shop to be cute and memorable.
I think it's very interesting how they play on the words 'Sai' (vegetable) and the rhinoceros (sai).

The menu looks like this.
There seem to be many meat dishes such as cutlets and hamburgers that combine local vegetables with Kano Highland Pork from Kano Farm, which handles everything from raising the pigs to manufacturing and selling processed products.
Furthermore, in addition to meat and vegetables, there are also dishes using fish such as the Shunan brand 'Suo Conger Eel' and the prefectural fish, pufferfish.
I'm getting hungry, so let's head inside.

Since it's a seat by the window, it's nice to be able to eat while looking at the river flowing nearby.

It seems you buy a meal ticket at the ticket machine on the left to order.
When I asked the staff, they told me that the standard menu items are the healthy lunch using Kano Highland Pork and barley miso, the Shunan Gut-Health Set Meal, and other popular items like the conger eel fry set meal using conger eel from Suo, and the pufferfish set meal. The daily set meal, where you can enjoy different dishes like horse mackerel fry, is also recommended.

Furthermore, as a weekend-only menu, the limited-quantity sashimi set meal, where craftsmen fillet fresh seafood purchased at auction from the Shunan City market, is also very popular. I'd like to try that too if I have the chance.

Although I was a little hesitant about what to eat, I decided to try the signature Shunan Gut-Health Set Meal for now.

The main dish is Kano Highland Pork grilled with yogurt and miso, and it comes with rice, miso soup, salad, kimchi, sashimi konjac, and strawberry jam yogurt.
According to the staff, almost all the vegetables used in the cabbage, salad, and kimchi are from Shunan City.

True to the name 'Gut-Health Set Meal,' it is a menu designed for gut health using yogurt and barley miso from Kano. The Kano Highland Pork is grilled with yogurt miso and topped with the restaurant's signature original sauce, miso-lees sauce. (This miso-lees sauce can be purchased at the restaurant and the shop inside Solene Shunan.)
The meat is quite tender but has a good chew, no gamey smell, and is juicy with just the right amount of fat. It was a very delicious dish where you could clearly taste the sweetness of the miso and the acidity of the yogurt.

It goes perfectly with the freshly cooked rice made from Kobayashi rice, a blend of Koshihikari and Milky Queen grown upstream at the nearby Yuno Onsen! The chewy texture and sweetness of the rice pair well with the meat, making it even more appetizing.
Also, adding the chive and Chinese cabbage kimchi to the rice adds a spicy kick that makes it even more exquisite!

The miso soup uses dried sardine stock and miso ordered from the Shimaya factory in Fukugawa, which was also very rich and delicious.
And the best part is that you can get free refills on the rice and miso soup. I thought this was a great service.

This was my first time eating sashimi konjac.
It was also very delicious, with the spicy flavor and miso-lees sauce blending well.
The yogurt dessert also had a nice balance of acidity and mildness, which was great.
It was a very satisfying and voluminous lunch.

At Kitchen Sai, lunch is served from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM, with last orders at 2:30 PM.
In addition to lunch, there is also a morning service where you can enjoy breakfast items like bread and coffee from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM.
(I personally hope to go for breakfast myself if I get the chance.)

If you ever stop by Solene Shunan, I hope you will enjoy lunch or breakfast at this restaurant.

*This article is published as part of the activities of a Shunan City citizen writer promoting the charm of Shunan City.