Obon de Gohan

Typical, traditional, tasty teishoku!

Obon de Gohan is a restaurant that sells teishoku sets, the large, multi-dish Japanese meals that are beautiful in appearance and also tend to be made up of delicious seasonal food. There was a curious lack of them around central Chiba city until recently, so this restaurant is definitely filling that gap. The restaurant itself is located in the busy Perie Chiba shopping mall. It manages to have a traditional feel but with a modern, minimalist twist, with simple wooden furniture, minimal decoration and black and white paintings. If you know Muji stores, imagine something like that, but with food. On the day I visited, it was early autumn and I was having lunch. I chose the fish set, but I could also have chosen a meat set or a “special” set. A large tray of different dishes arrived, including a tofu side dish, pickles, miso soup, and the main fish dish, vegetables with sardines (the latter with some bones still sharp within them when I bit into them, so beware!) in a mild ankake (clear, starchy) sauce. Lots of seasonal flavors featured, including eggplant, sweet potato, and pumpkin . I could also choose whether to have plain white rice or a sesame/hijiki (black seaweed) mix. I selected the latter and it was very nice, matching the food well but also good even by itself. All of it was very nice, except for the fish bones part, but the highlight for me was the bonus mini dessert I ordered for an additional 200 yen. It was tiramisu, but with kinako (roasted soybean flour) instead of coffee, and pieces of glazed sweet potato arranged on top. It was amazing. I would go back to this place for that alone! Obon de Gohan is popular and tends to be very busy, so service was a bit slow and the complimentary water was kind of lukewarm. Neither of those things are dealbreakers, though, and this is definitely a good place if you’re after some traditional Japanese food that’s not just one of the stereotypical dishes but still quite affordable.