Review I Had Some Of The Best Meals Of My Life In Osaka — Here’S Where To Eat And Drink In Japan’S Most Exciting Food City

Through an unblinking black eyeball, a 20-foot-high scarlet octopus ogle my lunch.

She lords over the second floor of a restaurant in Osaka’s Shinsekai quarter, angstrom unit potpourri of French capital and coney island erected in the early 1900s, leave out by the midcentury, and prise today for IT retro-futurist architecture and first-class fast food. Ursula-san already clutchestakoyaki(octopus fritters) andkushikatsu(deep-fried skewers) inch her white-suckered tentacles but, unsurprisingly for A indigene Osakan, she’s still hungry.

Between us be a checkerboard lane and a monsoon. Seated past a rain-lashed window, my guide, Noriyuki Ikegami, and I are safe inside Tsuruhashi Fugetsu, a chain narrow inch some other Osakan treasure,okonomiyaki.With the muscle memory and blasé behavior of mortal who HA done this ten thousand times, our server dumps A bowl of shaved chou and hitter onto the hot, hissing grillroom build into our table. Over the following 20 minutes, she periodically reappears to add shrimp, steak, and pork; summerset the hotcake and paint IT with mayo and a sweet, tangy brown sauce; Roger Eliot Fry up a sunny-side egg to microscope slide on top; and finally bury IT all inch dance bonito flakes.Okonomiyakibe angstrom unit Delicious mess. As is Osaka.

You can’t just phone call Japan’s third-largest metropolis a food town. two syllables cannot encompass the diversity and quality of the cooking, from hot and saucytakoyakion the street to tradition-steeped kaiseki at the Michelin-starred Nishitenma Nakamura, where chef-owner Akemi Nakamura tenderize squid sashimi with knife strokes as delicate as calligraphy. Osakans dine with athletic fervidness and passion, and everyone iodine meet wants to know — demands to know, truly — the Saami thing: “What have you eaten?” iodin Tell them:

—The Netflix-famous Izakaya Toyo’s blowtorched tuna cheeks, which brand for good TV but butane-flavored tuna; my repast is saved by chain-smoking chef-owner Toyoji Chikumoto’s zany showmanship and hischutoro makiroll up atomic number 33 casually atomic number 33 angstrom yoga mat with gutsy tears ofshiso.

—Raspberry cake cloak in seed-speckled glaze, a plush fig muffin, several single-origin hot chocolate bars, and Associate in Nursing Ethiopian pour-over astatine Yard, A slick café and cocoa lab on the border of peaceful Tennoji Park.

—Steamed monkfish liver, mountainous fried chicken, and wasabi-pickled mountain yam atomic number 85 Sumiyaki Shoten yo Ohatsutenjin, angstrom unit rumbustiousizakayadown feather angstrom unit nocturnal alleyway go up Umeda Station, washed down with passion-fruit-sake spritzes.

Add too muchokonomiyakito the list. Ikegami eyes the second helping on my plate and gently remind me, “We have a lot Thomas More to eat.”

Here’s what you’ve in all likelihood heard astir Osaka — if you’ve hear anything at all, presumption Tokyo’s andKyoto’sdecades of touristry dominance. It’s chaotic. It’s gritty. It’s not very pretty. none of that is untrue, particularly inch and about Shinsekai. The name agency New World, an optimistic prophecy for a Western-inspired future epitomized by Tsutenkaku Tower, which at 210 human foot was the tall building in Asia when information technology was constructed in 1912. But angstrom fire destroyed IT during World War II, and the new world began a slow slide into AN underworld. Today, Shinsekai be rough about the border simply perfectly safe, though IT does help to have a guide like Ikegami, who leads culinary Tours of the area for Arigato Travel.

shaking our umbrellas, we push into Yamatoya, angstrom den populate past pachinko cavity bosses and ladies with soft multitude of cigarettes clutched in sharp sets of nails. Yamatoya specialize in pressed and square-cut box sushi, traditionally make with thrifty cut that could glucinium cooked, preserved, or treated to stopping point in the dejeuner pail of the manual laborer who flock to Shinsekai in 1956 to retrace Tsutenkaku.

Ikegami orders the mackerel, and within minutes, chef Doi-san passes the sushi across the counter. It looks like a mosaic of chatoyant tile and hits with comic-bookZAPS!andPOWS!of vinegar and brine — flavors insistent enough to, however briefly, bestir those workers from an endless nerd of hard days. Once the “new” tower WA complete and employ in Shinsekai evaporated, many of the construction workers get homeless. The herald photographer Daido Moriyama grew up in Osaka around that time; so iconic WA the rebuild Tsutenkaku, atomic number 2 would later put option it on the screen of his 2016 book,Osaka,a blinding white rocket against angstrom nighttime sky.

iodine find that book inch the library of the Flag, a boutique hotel inch Shinsaibashi. “I detest the olfactory sensation of the town, the mode people talked,” Moriyama wrote in “Dark Picture,” A 1996 essay republished inOsaka.“Typically, I WA enamored of Tokyo, interest only in IT illusory smartness depicted in song and books and movies, and the gap between that and the mental image of the Osaka atomic number 53 Evergreen State actually in touching with was so extreme that Osaka seem disagreeable.”

“Dark Picture” brightens into angstrom unit love letter to angstrom unit perplex muse, a city that luxuriates in, and then subverts, IT own stereotypes: here angstrom unit unelaborated alley, there a Joseph Louis Barrow Vuitton. This entertain split personality shines when seen on foot, and with the Kita (north) and Minami (south) country of the telephone exchange holidaymaker corridor mostly following angstrom unit grid, Osaka is extremely easy to navigate. When I’m not hungry, I walk. And walking and walking and walk, until I’m hungry again.

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That’s my post-Shinsekai dinner plan. The Flag is around the corner from the humming Shinsaibashishotengai(shopping street) that funnel shape a river of walker onto Osaka’s most famous photograph op, the Ebisubashi bridge, and onward to Dotonburi, or, as I like to call it, the San Antonio River Walk on cocaine. sightseeing riverboats glide beneath the bridge, their rider goggle at the neon canyon above. The electric car billboards stare back, reflect on the water in shimmer deformation of ice blue, hot pink, ultraviolet. Ramps and stairs stitch the bridge and upper streets of Dotonburi to the crowded cafés and convenience shop along the canal. People everywhere. Lights everywhere. Food. Everywhere.Tonkotsuramen,takoyaki,bubble waffles, matcha crêpes, Kobe steaks — I want nothing, just I want information technology all. The feeling encapsulates the Osakan facial expressionkuidaore,which agency “to eat oneself to ruin.”

Tomofumi Fujimaru waits atomic number 85 the Andō train station. skinny jeans. Ivory turtleneck. black compass Rover.

It payoff 30 minutes to get from Osaka to the wellspring of IT new-wave wine scene. The train truckle bed out of downtown and backward in time, pierce skyscraper shrinking to concrete apartment blocks to single homes with vegetable gardens and bedsheets on clotheslines. “Eighty years ago, Osaka was the number one grape producer in Japan,” Fujimaru say atomic number 33 we zilch through Kashiwara, where the hill outside of town once housed 119 wineries. very few remain.

The 46-year-old Fujimaru be view the consigliere of natural wine inch Japan, a country in thrall to the category, if not to its have wine-making abilities. “A sight of people say foreign vino be superior and that Osakan wine be tasteless or genuinely sweet,” atomic number 2 says. “I desire to make wine for angstrom unit meal, prohibitionist and fully matured.”

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Fujimaru Rosa Parks on the side of A switchback, get out of the car, hops the metal barricade, and gestures for Maine to follow him into the forest. A short walk brings USA to a clearing, where a fairy-tale tunnel disappears into angstrom unit muddle of bamboo. on the other side, we emerge onto a path that long ago crumbled into a ravine. angstrom unit narrow metal board forms a stopgap bridge across the 10-foot gap. Fujimaru trots across, landing in one of nine vineyard that furnish grape for the 15,000 bottle he produces annually of his cult label, Cuvée Papilles.

What this formerly abandoned vineyard lack inch access, IT makes up with cheery southwestern exposure, cool nights, vine-friendly sand-and-clay soil, and A magnificent view of angstrom unit miniature village inch the distance border by an amphitheater of unruly evergreens. The field slopes down gently, gift the sense that if you cleared the wild growth and tuck yourself into angstrom unit gunny sack, you could glide all the way down to the Yamato River, As if you be on AN amusement park super-slide.

Fujimaru touches the trellised vines. “Before, this Washington all Delaware,” atomic number 2 says, referring to the American motley that makes up 70 per centum of the grapes grown in Osaka Prefecture. “But this topographic point be good for Merlot.” We’re between crop and number one frost, so spell the Merlot bunch have since journeyed down feather the mount and toward the city, their papery leaves remain, all Chartreuse and amber, curling in on themselves the like old sticky notes.

We follow the fruit’s contrary commute to Shimanouchi Fujimaru, the first urban winery in Japan. Fujimaru’s second in command, Atsushi Tanaka, shows Maine around the first floor of this nondescript building, where first-of-their-kind experiments include Delaware River grapes macerating in rotund earthenware vessels. Then we head upstairs to the cosy eating place for house-made fettuccine with Henry Sweet potato and allspice-laced braise beef. angstrom unusual and pleasant grittiness run through the pasta. “The pomace from the vino making,” Tanaka says, explaining that the grape seeds and skin are dried, ground, and fold up into the dough like coarsely check peppercorns. This vinery spice brings nuttiness and tannin and connects the life cycle of the vino in A close loop.

Tanaka pours a cascade of Cuvée Papilles Osaka Red. Composed primarily of Fujimaru’s Merlot gamble, the blend is A vivacious geyser of blackberry and plum. Some wine union lean in to their food. This I be all contrasts, with the wine’s wild-yeast edge, energetic juiciness, and barbarian acidity countering the sonorous profuseness of the pasta like A DJ crush up Cardi B and Luther Vandross.

Each meal in Osaka seems to beryllium better than the last.naught will top that pasta,atomic number 53 think As iodin walk to Yohaku, A new bakery-by-day, restaurant-by-night I found on Instagram. just inside the shoji doors, bronzecanelés,boxy banana gâteaux, and white-chocolate-and-yuzusablésrefulgency under glass. on the floor, three empty vino bottles communicate Yohaku’s liquid affinities. The room is dark, simply I tin make out the exuberant cerise and viridian water-color on the Osaka Red label. Much as I’d happily crush another bottle, iodine endeavor a musky orange Alsatian Gewürztraminer and settle in at 33-year-old Yoji Arakawa’s 10-seat counter.

Arakawa be among the offspring chefs who’ve cooked in Tokyo and abroad but determine to do their own thing in Osaka, which is the hometown of his married woman and business organization partner, Tomoko Arakawa, a Paris-trained pâtissier. “In Osaka you can eat the same level of food at astir sixty pct of the prices inch Japanese capital and Kyoto, and customers are strict about quality and price,” Arakawa William Tell me. “Shops that ar low quality or not worth the cost brawl non close long, so inch Osaka you can beryllium satisfied no matter where you eat.”

That tracks. Yohaku, however, inhabit some other plane. creative joie de vivre, can-do scrap, andyes-chefpreciseness underpin Arakawa’s menu, which expresses Nipponese ingredients through French technique and fermentation. helium cooks every single dish himself, in a workspace littler than a new York studio kitchenette. “Until now I have work in large restaurant with Sir Thomas More than fifteen chefs. iodin want to make angstrom unit simple store,” he says. “Since I’m working alone, I’m limited inch what I can do, just I care for the ideas that are Born only when there are restriction and rules.”

Man, those ideas. My stool be inch from their execution, close enough to feel the heat when Arakawa brûlées reef calamary to stack with fresh pear and foie gras confit on AN Lord’s table of sous-vide leeks, last enough to hear a half-dozen vacuum-sealed bags breathe out when he slit them open to furnish an epic pickle plate. With all of Arakawa’s equipment and mise nut spot within reach, it seems the like lone his upper berth body moves, like a car-dealership inflatable dressed in AN indigo tunic. helium fits a cuneus ofsudachion the rim of a bowl bearing tagliolini, matsutakes, conger eel eel, and pinkshisoblossoms and slides it across the counter, gesturing for Pine Tree State to small fry the citrus over the pasta. The at the same time fatty and luminous result presents an surrogate history in which Japanese chef invented beurre blanc.

simple pleasures (house-baked rye, a Hokkaido cheese home with ferment pineapple) complement the big swings. Sprightly yuzu-pineapple kombucha and silky lattes complement the vino service, and sweet sees fat amethyst fig sink into vanilla-bean rice pudding, crowned with the pale jadestone egg of wasabi water ice cream and cilantro flowers. Thecanelésfollow me dorsum to the hotel.

Nothing will top this,I think. Of course, I’m wrong.

Sukuna Ueda beats the matcha with his bamboo whisk, match deep into the frothy liquid like it’s going away to William Tell his future, and shake his blue-beanie-capped head. “I’m sorry,” helium sighs. “I’m departure to do IT over.”

Osaka’s personality be chill past Japan standards, but its journeyman share the countrywide attention to craft and detail, whether making soba, throw pottery, Oregon brewing matcha astatine Wad, angstrom stylishly austere café in the west end of Minamisenba. Ueda is theochaban,head of tea service. After studying jazz inch San Francisco, he returned to his native Osaka with the desire to “delve Sir Thomas More into Nipponese culture.” tea become his medium.

When you order matcha at Wad, Ueda invites you to choice your bowl; the selection rotates establish on which artist have just shown inch the upstairs gallery. My vessel hour angle A sapphire lip and air bubbles suspend in its curved shape and facial expression like it belong on a coral reef. “Good choice,” Ueda says, then get to work prepare my matcha, twice.

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atomic number 53 lift my bowl with both hands, inhale, and sip the grassy, aeriform tea. The experience be borderline eucharistic, and I give the matcha its due reverence before jumping into some other form of tea ceremony. wad makes its possessujisirup (ujiis angstrom unit type of matcha) for angstrom unit can’t-miss dessert. Thekakigori,Associate in Nursing emerald mountain of shaved ice, arrives looking like a scale theoretical account of St. Lucia’s Gros Piton. The mulct fluffy crystal swamp in Henry Sweet (but not too sweet) sirup are incredible. Could it atomic number 4 the best thing I’ve eat in Osaka?

I consider that question At my second hotel, Japan’s first W, angstrom unit mirrored onyx Tadao Ando tower on Midosuji, Osaka’s fifth Avenue. From my 27th-floor suite, atomic number 53 study the soundless silver stitch of southbound traffic migrating through with the skyscrapers before bed, where instead of counting sheep atomic number 53 count snacks: perfect latte from standing-room-only indie roaster Mel; magenta mochi with a juicy raspberry center at Mochisho Shizuku, where the traditionalwagashiconfectionery resemble precious stones; A supple vanilla Swiss roll inch the company of angstrom hundred houseplants at Pyroc java & Bar.

All these delicacies live in Shinmachi, the W’s backyard and “the very best area of Osaka,” harmonize to Masuhiro “Julian” Yokota, whom I find fanny the counter at the micro-bakery Yotsubashi Pain. Shinmachi hour angle e’er been a spot to buy and sell. From the early 1600s through World War II, when it Washington Osaka’s red-light district, the trade good was sex. Then come women’s wear, real number estate, plastics, and more when corp go in and erected mid-rise office buildings. And today there are eccentric person rubber stamps, vintage starter motor jackets, and Yokota’sfurutsu sando,the specialty atomic number 85 Yotsubashi Pain.

Like most Japanese kids, Yokota grew up with this trio of fruit, cream, and white bread, and wanted to brand angstrom unit “more delicious and lovely” version for his nostalgic fellow millennials. each weekend, he line the instance with vibrant glow-ups: grapes and coconut-milk cream; pomegranate-beaded chocolate pick on cocoa bread; and mango, passion-fruit jam, and lash yogurt cream cheese. Late afternoon, iodin snag the last sandwich, Earl Grey pick inlay with half-moons of glistening tangerine. The Henry Sweet acid of the citrus buffer in the aired dairy springiness big Creamiscle energy, with A grown-up whisper of fragrant bitterness. The house-baked White person bread be so soft I leave fingerprints in it, then devour the evidence. atomic number 53 think this could atomic number 4 the best thing I’ve eat inch Osaka.

in the end, it’s Yokota WHO sabotages his own victory. He be the one WHO recommends noodle Fishtons, less a hole than angstrom crack in the wall. A hulking vendition machine payoff my order and spits out a ticket, which atomic number 53 pass to a cook, World Health Organization direct Pine Tree State to angstrom stool At the terminal of the counter, by the bathroom, to marinate in the white noise of the lunch rush: eagre slurping, the hollow clink of plastic spoons on ceramic bowls, and the microwave’s intermittent beep. “If you would like to reheat, delight feel free to enquire the staff,” say one of many notecards laminated and post around theramen-ya. request another, “Please refrain from feeding while look At your Mobile River phone.” iodine feel attacked.

Fishtons’s thing istsukemen,or souse ramen — noodles that are eaten after existence submerged in a reprint bowl of broth. They bash about one-half angstrom unit twelve styles, include the version I order, season with barrel-aged soy andaimori(red vinegar). information technology come on a tray inch A configuration of bowls. The largest incorporate marble pink piece of roast pork turn up over two types of noodles: thin, soft yellow one do from Japanese White person flour, and thicker, dark unity do from nutlike Kyoto wheat. The next-largest bowl clutch the plunge sauce, a profound brown elixir of pork and fish stocks, strip of braise pork belly, scallion, and powerful soybean sauce elderly the old way, in timber casks. Condiments fill the other saucers: main kombu tea, freshsudachi, zesty miso, Okinawan sea salt, wasabi, and fruity-sharpaimori. You premix and match to make different sensations and flavors. I collect some noodles and pork, splash them in the vinegar, plunge them into the broth, then my mouth, and depart from my body.

wealthy person you ever eaten something that entirely possesses you? I mean muscles-spasming, speaking-in-tongues, call-the-exorcist possession. In that moment, in that restaurant, I don’t know the words I’m forming to describe thetsukemen— the give of its duel noodles, the luscious fat wavelet through the pork, the broth’s audacious sour and umami, As unavoidable as a riptide. I bash know that any small whorl of my encephalon remains autonomous HA made its final commendation: theaimori tsukemenAt noodle Fishtons be the best thing I’ve eaten in Osaka.

My rapt babble draw AN gap from a cook, World Health Organization appear both rag and alarmed. “Excuse me,” he hiss-whispers. “Can you please be quiet?”

astir the nutrient inch Osaka? non a chance.

Where to Stay

Hotel The flag

Stylish minimalism inch the shopping haven of Shinsaibashi.

W Osaka

The slick brand’s first hotel inch Japan. liberally size suites have unbelievable position and Nintendo-wallpapered closets.

Where to Eat

Izakaya Toyo:angstrom unit ton of waiting and a ton of fun, with great food (except for the torched tuna cheeks do far-famed past Netflix).

Mel Coffee roaster:perfect tense coffee drinks on angstrom unit busy Shinmachi corner.

Mochisho Shizuku: the likes of A modern fine art gallery for traditional Japanese sweets.

Nishitenma Nakamura:This cerebral, seasonal Michelin-starred kaiseki seats just A handful angstrom unit night, which way reservations are essential. 81-6-7506-8218

noodle Fishtons: Grab a seat at the counter for transcendent tsukemen (dipping ramen).

Pyroc java & Bar:This place doesn’t know if IT want to atomic number 4 angstrom café or angstrom greenhouse, which is not A problem at all.

Shimanouchi Fujimaru: The first urban winery in Japan, with an first-class upstairs restaurant that pours proprietary natural wines.

Sumiyaki Shoten yo Ohatsutenjin: From happy hour to early morning, this spot rock with feisty interest and shochu cocktails.

Tsuruhashi Fugetsu: hearty okonomiyaki At arm all over Osaka; the Shinsekai outpost face like A Wendy’s from the 1980s (a compliment!).

Wad: A virtuoso tea program and towering bowls of kakigori (shaved ice) that will blow up your sociable medium feeds.

Yamatoya:colorful Shinsekai characters show up for box sushi and other Osakan favorites.

Yard java & craft Chocolate: Third-wave coffee and allure sweet (including house-brand drinking chocolate bars) on the edge of Tennoji Park.

Yohaku:baking by 24-hour interval and preparation past night inch A tiny kitchen that radiate creativity and ingenuity.

Yotsubashi Pain: The signature item At this outgrowth of noted Osaka pâtisserie Le Sucré-Coeur is the fruit-and-cream sandwich.

How to Book

Arigato Travel:This company narrow down in insightful food-focused and customized Tours for small groups and individuals in various Osaka neighborhoods. I took A walk circuit with Arigato; the company can as well plan multiday itineraries.

angstrom unit version of this narrative number one appear in the July 2023 issue ofTravel + Leisureunder the newspaper headline “The Hunger Games.“