M.CITRUS Fruit Parlor: Citrus Soft Serve at a Yuasa Mandarin Farm

Overview

M.CITRUS Fruit Parlor stands among the terraced groves of Suhara, on the slopes above Yuasa Bay, about ten minutes by car from the Yuasa interchange. It is the shop window of Nushii Farm, a citrus grower now in its fifth generation, which opened the parlour in November 2022 to sell its own fruit in a form you can eat where it is picked. The ground does much of the work here: a warm Kuroshio climate, sea wind across the terraces, and summers dry enough to concentrate the sugar.

The thing to order is the citrus jelly soft serve — juice pressed from the farm's own fruit, set as a jelly and layered over soft serve. A cup is ¥600 for milk and ¥650 for the citrus or mixed version; a cone is ¥700 and ¥750. Plain soft serve starts at ¥400, and fresh-pressed juice, a frozen citrus and a citrus danish fill out the counter. Which fruit goes into the jelly depends on the month: the farm grows its flagship Matsubee (松兵衛) mandarins alongside Kiyomi, Seminole and Valencia oranges. The Matsubee mandarin carries the prefecture's Premier Wakayama quality mark, and Arida mandarins as a whole were among the first regional collective trademarks registered in Japan, in 2006.

There are seven seats and two benches outside, everything can be taken away, the car park holds five and the shop is cash only. It closes on Thursdays, and the opening time shifts with the season, so check the farm's Instagram before setting out. Yuasa station is about seven minutes away by taxi, but buses are few and a car is the practical choice.