HACHINOHE-SENBEI-JIRU
Hachinohe’s most famous dish is arguably rice cracker soup.
I won’t lie, it’s one of the strange dishes I’ve come across on my travels.
Walking through downtown Hachinohe, I noticed various restaurants advertising it on their signboards, and wandered into a busy looking izakaya to try it firsthand.
A few minutes after ordering it, a hot pot was brought out, with a bowl of soup containing chicken stock, green onions, mushrooms and cabbage, being cooked by a powerful candle underneath. The waitress then brought out a dish with two nanny senbei rice crackers and advised me to break them over the soup and let them soak for three minutes.
The waitress laughed at my clumsy cracker breaking technique, as the crackers imploded all over the soup bowl. But for the most part it was a success and after a few minutes, the crackers had swollen in covered the bowl of soup.
I expect the crackers to disintegrate into pieces but surprisingly they all stayed together as I scooped them out with a spoon in to a bowl, along with the broth and vegetables.
The crackers were quite chewy and certainly added life to an otherwise uneventful soup. It was a confusing sensation, as the crackers were slightly sweet, but the soup was very much salty.
Would I eat it again? Definitely. If not for the crackers, then certainly for the satisfaction of breaking them into a soup bowl being cooked by a candle in my very own miniature hotpot.
Restaurant Name : Hokoruya
