Ozawa Farms: Strawberries and Fine French Cuisine Lunch Course【Round 2!】

Encore! Encore!

Ozawa Farms is the most popular FoodCamp-destination every year. For the May-edition, we wanted to give as many people as possible the opportunity to join, so we had a lottery to select the participants (a FoodCamp-first!). To ensure a fair selection, we used ChatGPT. Of course, this left some people disappointed. To make sure everyone could enjoy Ozawa Farm’s amazing strawberries, we decided to organize an extra ‘encore’ edition (another first for FoodCamp!).

Ozawa Farm’s fully-ripe strawberries are only available at the farm shop, and can’t be found anywhere else. Amazingly, owner Mutsuhiro Ozawa held off the opening of sales at the shop until after FoodCamp was finished! The fact that he was able to produce fully ripe strawberries to perfectly match the timing of FoodCamp speaks volumes of his skill and know-how as a strawberry-professional.

There was one more thing that caught people’s eyes, besides the strawberries. Ozawa’s son Shunsuke made his debut as a guide for the FoodCamp activities! All the guests were happy to learn he is about to go to college next year, to major in agriculture. He sure takes after his dad!

Ozawa Strawberries… at home?

This was already the 9th edition of FoodCamp at Ozawa Farms, but somehow Ozawa still manages to come up with something new every single time. His latest idea: a seedling replanting class! Guests were given a pot in which to replant a strawberry seedling, arrange it with flowers, and take home with them. If they take care of them well, they will be able to enjoy Ozawa’s strawberries even at home!

The reason for adding flowers to the pot is to help attract butterflies and bees to pollinize the strawberry plant. In the hopes of a fruitful spring, the guests started making their arrangements as pretty as possible.

The strawberries still have a long road ahead towards spring. For that reason, we set up a special Facebook page, Magonote Saien (Magonote Vegetable Garden), where guests can stay in touch with Ozawa for tips on how to make sure their strawberries grow to fruition. We are looking forward to the results coming spring!

Of course, there was one more big activity. What’s a Ozawa FoodCamp without strawberry picking? Don’t worry; we understand that for most of our guests the chance to pick and enjoy strawberries right there on the spot is the biggest attraction of a FoodCamp at Ozawa Farms.
(Note: As a rule, Ozawa Farms does not facilitate strawberry-picking, so please refrain from inquiries.)

Upon entering the greenhouse, the sweet strawberry aroma is omnipresent. The guests have a wonderful time discovering all the little red treasures hidden between the bright and fresh green leaves. The taste is unmistakable. As the guests got a taste of two strawberry species, Tochiotome and Yuyake Berry, it was a good way to learn the difference between the two. Yuyaka Berry is a species developed by Fukushima Prefecture by crossbreeding Tochiotome- with Kaorino strawberries. The orangy color and sweet, soft taste are said to represent the character of people from Fukushima.

A strawberry-packed, top-quality French lunch

What really brought out the quality and taste of Ozawa’s strawberries was the culinary skill of Chef Kunioka (Koriyama French Culinary Laboratory Recettes), who reprised his role from the edition in May. He opened his casual French bistro-style restaurant in September last year, and is receiving quite the attention from in- and outside the prefecture.

As we were nearing the end of the year, the chef’s Salade Gourmande, with its bright and vivid colors, was prepared with the prospect of the holidays in mind, turning the Ozawa’s greenhouse into a Christmas part. Of course, the usual “bon appetit” was replaced with a “joyeux noël”!

The main dish for the day was a pot-au-feu of seasonal vegetables and pork. The dish came in a special type of plastic film, which when opened released warm steam that filled the greenhouse with a delicious, savory aroma. It was served on special Obori Soma-yaki plates from the esteemed Tokichirogama pottery kiln, made special for FoodCamp. Chef Kunioka was personally involved in the design!

There was much more to enjoy for the guests. Chef Kunioka’s restaurant offers a wide selection of wines, and the chef himself is a specialist when it comes to wine-pairing. This time, we offered a very seasonal wine-pairing set: only three days before the tour, this year’s beaujolais nouveau was released, meaning it was a must-have for the pairing set. Besides wine, there were many other drinks available. Yuka Tamura, our star bartender, developed an amazing line-up of drinks, including several original cocktails. One that especially stood out was ‘Ichi-Go-Rock’. Take a base of Japanese sake Ichi (Sasanokawa Shuzo, Koriyama), add frozen mini-strawberries as a substitute for ice cubes, and you get a wonderful cocktail that gets sweeter by the minute!

Both for food and for drinks, this was a FoodCamp to truly appreciate Ozawa’s strawberries. Mr. Ozawa, let’s do this again next year!