Fujimaru Odawara Ekimae

The server was having a lot of fun and clearly was both proud of her restaurant and the food they serve. She made the experience very welcoming by ensuring that she had enough English to ask where we were from. The answer, Canada, was met with great approval! Great food at a good price. I had the chirashi. The fish was delightfully prepared with a chopped style of very small bites. Be aware that some areas are the traditional Japanese seating style when you'll need to remove your shoes

I guided two Americans to visit in late November 2023 (my third time). Since it's a popular restaurant, it gets very crowded during lunch, so we highly recommend getting there early and lining up or making a reservation, choosing your dishes quickly, and quickly placing your order in the order you want it served. (However, by 1:00 p.m., the store was nearly empty.) Details are below. I arrived around 11:25 on a weekday Friday and was about 8th in line waiting for the store to open. After the restaurant opened at 11:30, customers with reservations were allowed inside first, and we arrived at our table about 10 minutes later. It took a while to select the menu, and I finished ordering via smartphone around 11:50. A waiter came over a little later and asked me the order in which I should serve the food, as some dishes would take a long time, and I asked her to join me if possible. So we had to wait for about 1 hour. (A stove was placed in between to light the kamameshi.) First, a set meal with boiled red sea bream, then a sushi soba set meal, and finally a set meal set of kamameshi. After that, the individual small plates (ordered later) came out one after another, in an unfortunate order... I'm convinced that the food for the reserved table is served first, and then it's made in the order of arrival and order. Even if you had to wait that long, the food was fresh, tasty, and plentiful, especially the Kinmedai stew, which had no odor at all and had a wonderful flavor. The miso-flavored fish soup had no odor and was delicious, and I was surprised that even my foreign companion ate it all. If you're visiting for lunch for the first time, we recommend choosing sashimi, boiled/grilled fish, and tempura in that order, and if you're in a group, ordering different types and sharing.