After finishing a very delicious Saga-gyu meal at Yamamotoya I stepped outside.
I had no plan for a second stop. So I simply started walking through the downtown area of Karatsu.
Soon I turned left into a small alley where cars could not pass. There were not many shops with lights on. I’m not even sure if a place like this should be called a “downtown area.”
Then we noticed a clean little shop with the lights on.
That place was Karatsu Gozukon (唐津ごずこん).
To say it in advance, I liked this place so much that I visited it twice.
The shop is clean, the gyoza are delicious, and they serve wine by the glass. But more than anything, the staff are incredibly kind.
It is a place that simply makes you feel good.
I just walked in because the atmosphere drew us in, but later I learned that this restaurant opened through a collaboration with Gion Gozukon in Kyoto.
Gion Gozukon is a kappo restaurant that serves a wide variety of dishes. The gyoza there were reinterpreted using Karatsu ingredients, and that became the gyoza served at Karatsu Gozukon.
When I visit this place, I usually start with a glass or two of wine. For wines served by the glass, their quality is surprisingly good.
The ones I had were a red from Cote-de-Rhone and a white from Bergerac.
It was a chilly winter day, so Syrah from Cote-de-Rhone felt like the right wine for the season.
Bergerac is right next to Bordeaux, and it had a lot of the Sauvignon Blanc nuances that I personally like. It was very clean and easy to drink.
Gozukon calls itself a “gyoza bar.”
So they offer three kinds of signature gyoza, along with many other dishes that go well with drinks. And everything is clean and delicious.
One of their signature dishes is Karatsu Gyoza (唐津ぎょうざ).
These gyoza include squid in the filling and are served with vegetables and a squid-ink sauce. The texture of the squid is quite unique, and the squid-ink sauce makes the dish feel special.
Another signature dish is Nishiki Gyoza (錦ぎょうざ), a classic pan-fried pork gyoza.
This kind of dish is almost impossible to make bad. To be honest, I liked this one even more than the Karatsu gyoza. If you want something immediately and clearly delicious, yakigyoza is always the answer.
When you order Nishiki gyoza, they give you a sauce made of vinegar with shichimi chili powder. It has a very nice charm. It cuts through the richness of the oil-fried gyoza perfectly.
Saga Prefecture is also famous for Japanese sake, so I decided to try some here as well. But the sake list was a bit disappointing.
Nabeshima Tokubetsu Junmai is so common in this area that you can find it almost everywhere, so I skipped it. Taki and Ozeki are not local sake, so I skipped those as well.
In the end, I chose Manrei Tokubetsu Junmai Chokarakuchi (万齢 特別純米 超辛口), a local sake from Karatsu. It was very clean and easy to drink.
It was not an expensive sake, and since it seemed to be something you mainly find in Karatsu, I later bought a bottle to take home.
On my second visit, I also tried shochu.
I personally prefer shochu over Japanese sake. During this trip I mostly drank Japanese sake,
but I was still curious about the shochu.
The drink in the photo is Daikaratsu (大唐津), a rice shochu made in Karatsu. I had it as a soda-wari, and it was very clean and refreshing.
If a region is famous for Japanese sake, that usually means the water and rice are good. So it makes sense that the rice shochu here is also high quality.
A clean and comfortable atmosphere, delicious gyoza, and many great dishes to go with drinks. High-quality wines by the glass and a wide selection of drinks.
And above all, the incredibly kind staff.
Because of all that, this was the only place I visited twice during this trip.
If I come back to Karatsu someday,
this is definitely a place I would want to visit again.
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