Kadoya occupies a building that used to be a senbei shop — a maker of the grilled rice crackers sold all over Japan. The old shop has been renovated into an Italian restaurant, and the conversion is a good one: plenty of daylight comes in from outside, and the room is easy to sit in for a couple of hours.
This is one of the kominka restaurants where the old house is the setting rather than the whole point. The cooking is solid on its own terms.
Lunch
Lunch comes as sets. There is a pasta set and a paella set, and both open the same way: a bruschetta of the day, then a zuppa made with Kamakura vegetables.
The bruschetta when I went was grilled chicken with potato salad, with pickled red cabbage cutting through it.
The zuppa is worth paying attention to. Kamakura vegetables — the varied produce grown around the city — are a local point of pride, and here they go into a tomato-based soup that comes out concentrated and sweet.
You choose your pasta from several options, or take the pasta of the day. The day I went it was swordfish in a tomato arrabbiata — hot enough to notice, with the fish balancing it.
The paella arrives hot, loaded with seafood, and is the more substantial of the two sets.
Dessert and coffee can be added to either set. The tiramisu is made in house, served generously, and not too sweet.
There is natural wine
Worth knowing, because it is not a given in a lunch-set restaurant. Kadoya keeps natural wine, and staff will bring out a few options to choose between — a white went well with the meal above.
Book, and allow time to walk
Two practical points, and they matter more than anything else here.
It fills up. By just after twelve the restaurant was full, and people arriving without a reservation were being turned away. Book.
It is a walk from the station — around twenty minutes, and Kamakura’s streets have more slope in them than a map suggests. Treat it as part of a stroll through the city rather than a quick stop, and it becomes an asset instead of a chore.
