Kamikoya is also a Bed & Breakfast, with lunch and dinner available if requested. With few other options and the nearest store several kilometres away, I chose the food-included plan. For three days, I was treated to Chikako Uitenboogaart’s cooking. Chikako specializes in spring greens and organic vegetables from her own garden and or picked from the wild. Each meal was a surprise and a beauty for both eyes and stomach.
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- Breakfast with rice and natto – fermented beans
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- Salmon for breakfast
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- Lunchtime
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- Fishcakes with onigri and a wild salad.
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- Fish for dinner
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- Stuffed shitake mushrooms with wild horsetail on rice and miso soup with river greens
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- Lunchtime with Chikako and Yohei
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- Okonomiya-ki, an empty-your-fridge kind of omelette originating in Hiroshima
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- Chikako demonstrates how to put on the special sauce!
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- Chikako demonstrates how to put on the special sauce!
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- Mine didn’t turn out quite so pretty…added dried fish.
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- Chikako in her kitchen
Yohei Uitenboogaart is the manager, looking after finances, the website, driving visitors to and from Kamikoya and all the other details that never quite get written down in a job description. The day I left, the studio was completely re-arranged, ready to receive some 20 visitors from Taiwan, all coming for a two hour course in papermaking.
And of course there is Siepie, the cat. He looks after the goldfish.
Yohei hard at work
Kamikoya Showroom
Siepie, the Kamikoya cat