Osaka Trip Report

Night 1. Not sure what the name of the place is but it’s on the corner right next to our hotel.

The ramen is superb. Nice streak of bonito flavor through the rich broth. The tsukemen is also lights out good. Nice thick chewy noodles (thicker than the ramen noodles). The dipping broth less porky and more bonito than Tsujita. As good as Tsujita is, this is slightly better. Mostly because the broth is more complex. Impressive for a random place on the corner. It seems to be well known to locals since it was full up until closing at 1100pm. The egg is this odd but beautiful dark orange red color and perfectly custardy inside.

Edited to add Yelp info:

https://m.yelp.com/biz/煮干しらーめん玉五郎-本町店-大阪市

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Osaka?!?! Only caught a couple of flights out of there but a family friend who is from Osaka says it’s a must if food is a priority. Have fun and looking forward to your experiences.

… and welcome to Osaka.

Love Japan for food. Tokyo has always been fun for food. Osaka is food paradise.

Had a little snafu by the concierge at the hotel. We had wanted to go to Ichimatsu for yakitori. But they double booked it for the wrong day with Binbiya.

So they made us a reservation at Toriya Kunigata Seisakujo. I was initially worried that they were sending us to some tourist joint. But this was a local casual Japanese speaking only joint which was exactly what I wanted. Probably better than my first pick.

Unfortunately that means the menu is all Japanese and the staff does not speak English.

I was able to plow through some of it with what little food Japanese I knew (they were out of wings, and nabe). We got some help by some friendly locals which also helped.

The yakitori is superb. I don’t know what they do do make their chickens taste so good but the quality of the meat itself is outstanding. The heart was good but I wouldn’t say better than the ones we get back home. However they had a throat cut that was superb. The rest of the cuts were all superlative. We also got an salad and rice dish recommended by our neighbors. We ordered bonus rounds of salad and chicken throat. It came out to $30pp all in which included 2 rounds of beer for us and 1 round of shochu for our neighbors.

Highly recommended.

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Japanese chickens taste like chicken is supposed to taste. They also really let their poultry truly roam free range. Oh, and the strains are bred for best taste, not for biggest size or best egg-layer. Oh, and also each link in their supply line respects the food chain, the product, and ultimately the customer.

Glad you’re having fun. For once. :wink:

BTW are the sakura in full bloom yet?

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Very late this season. Just about 10% are in bloom. This season appears to be 2-3 weeks behind.

Where is global warming when you need it?

Hopefully Fuji and Tokyo are a little further along than Kyoto and Osaka.

Eating our way through Kuromon Market.

This is a lot of fun. Lots of seafood vendors where you can just buy and eat on premises.

Had some excellent uni. Amazing kama toro (ate it all before we could take a picture). Had grilled live kurumaebi. Penshell clam sashimi. There were plenty of Kobe beef vendors if you’re into that sort of thing. The biggest bummer is that the vendor who had live mantis prawns didn’t offer an option to cook it or serve as sashimi like many of the other places.

Highly recommend you make this a lunch stop.

Too bad the site doesn’t let you upload videos. I have a great one of them grilling the live kurumaebi.

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That ramen looks ridiculously good. 煮干しらーめん玉五郎 (玉五郎 = tamagoro, 煮干し seems to be “ni-boshi”, ie the dried anchovies they use for the base stock). The golden broth looks very similar to Kinguemon 金久右衛門, that specializes in variants of shoyu stock ramen.

Sounds like you are having the time of your life! Glad you enjoyed Binbiya and thanks for reporting back! It’s astounding this is categorized as izakaya and has an M star, but is so on point. Maybe Fujiya (Japanese/Spanish Michelin star restaurant) is worth a try, though I’d probably do Narisawa in Tokyo first.

Matsuba gani is one of the must eat seafood in Osaka, if you ever get the chance to try the legs charcoal grilled (to medium rare) do not miss it.

A shame you didn’t get to try tori nabe at the yakitori shop, along with fresh in house chicken meatballs to cook in the hotpot. It’s one of the best experiences ever in a place like that, along with savoring chicken sashimi. J_L is right, that’s the way things are done (the sources, the vendors, the farming practice). Bourdain and others would label it “respect for ingredients” but that’s the norm over there, along with the way things are priced. It’s super competitive there, if you are in the F&B business there, and performing at average (and not much value added) the business won’t last long.