The Joys of Osakan Food

Happy Australia Day to all those back home,

Hope your in the midst of enjoying your long weekend, either lounging around or out and about.

Well a continuation of my excellent adventures in Osaka has come to my favourite topic ... FOOD. I LOVE IT, and Osaka is a food lovers paradise ... as I mentioned before, they have a great giant touristy street just full of food.

Now we all know the typical Japanese foods that you can get at any restaurant in Melb. Things like sushi (did you know that they don't actually have many of the fillings we have back and home - I love chicken teriyaki too ... but they have a lot more raw stuff and not only fish), sashimi (lots of raw seafood without the rice), tempura (they have some great mushrooms that they do tempura style ... and this little chilli looking thing), yakitori (although its not just the chicken breast/thigh bits they grill here, its also thing delectible chicken areas such as the crunchy tendon bits, chicken skin, chicken liver, intestines ... uuuhhh - they all look the same smeared in the teriyaki sauce too - you can also have them sweet - teriyaki, or salty), Gyoza (which is not originally Japanese but really Chinese like chaahan - fried rice and ramen - noodles).

So I'll try to indulge you with some Japanese cuisine that you may have not seen too often. Our first real Osakan dish was first invented in Osaka ... and is copied all over Japan. Its called Takoyaki - fried octopus balls. As the name suggests, their little balls about the size of a golf ball, and generally contain a batter that is made, cabbage, some sort of seasoning and a piece of octopus. It requires a special pan with round moulds. Once finish, you whack some mayo, a brown sweet sauce (generally used on okonomiyaki - the pancake things) and fish shavings known as katsuobushi. I'm not a great big fan ... don't get me wrong, its not that it taste bad or anything, I just don't find anything special about it, but the Japanese go crazy for it.



In Osaka you can try different types and not just the normal Takoyaki. We had three types on this occasion. The yellow looking is actually made from egg for the outer case. You then dip the whole thing into the soup and down she goes - I loved this one the most. The boat shaped container next door is the actual original Takoyaki.

Our next stop was another Osakan delight known as Kushi-katsu (incidentally katsu just basically means deep fried cutlets of meat in Japanese - so there will be dishes you've heard like katsu don or katsu curry - I always thought it only meant deep fried pork!). But basically these are small establishment with the goodies waiting to be fried within eyes view and a bowl of batter and deep fryer next to the cook. You can get a range of things deep fried like, prawns, asparagus, mushrooms, eggs, strips of beef, pork or chicken, cheese, peppers, squid, octopus. I guess because Japan doesn't have a brunswick St to get all the greasy food after a late night of drinking - kushi katsu is a fair replacement.

Here's a plate of our fried delights - Mmm Oishi desu ne!

On our travels we also found strange flavours of our favourite foods like Popcorn. One such place looked like an American set-up but have suck dericious flavours such as wasabi, fish, plum, etc - can't really remember many. Thankfully they did have some normal flavours like caramel.

How did I know the popcorn place was an American franchise - Mmmm - not sure really



Now, theme parks and fairs are notorious for having bad and expensive food - universal studios was not exception. So you'd normally expect things like hot dogs, hamburgers, hot chips, dimmis (i miss my dimmis), but we're in Japan. Above is a Katsu dog (remember I told you what katsu meant). So a Japanese variation of a hot dog - its a crumb piece of pork in a roll - gotta say it wasn't too bad - but I was also really hungry at this point.



More Universal studio food, this place showed pictures of massive great whopping burgers. Little did I know that you had to actually create it yourself. So after you order, they give you your bun with the meat inside and you then put whatever you want inside at a salad bar. There was curry mash - that yellow stuff.



This was my giant coke to go with my burger ... it was like 1.5litres. I felt some diabetes coming on after i finished it. Although, they did half fill it with ice.


One thing that Matt heard was very good and needed to try was called Kitsune udon. Udon as most of you would know is a thick wheat noodle. So we went to this restaurant that was famous for it and waited in line for about 20mins. The wait did not disappoint. Kitsune udon or fox udon (no idea) is udon sitting in a soup with pieces of sweet deep fried tofu called aburaage. It was dericious!

My kitsune Udon - great on a cold cold

We also had to embark on the popular Okonomiyaki - commonly referred to as Japanese pancake. Interesting fact - okonomi means "what you like" and yaki means "grilled" or "cooked" so okonomiyaki means "cook what you like, the way you like". Hiroshima is actually the famous region for this dish but Osaka's style is the most common method found throughout Japan and other countries. So going on the meaning of Okonomiyaki - in Osaka, they have okonomiyaki restaurants where you make your own, you basically order what filling you want, like pork, beef, seafood, etc and they bring out the batter for you ready to cook.

Here's the menu at this particular Japan okonomiyaki restaurant.

Here we are in the action of cooking okonomiyaki. Believe it or not, I had never eaten okonomiyaki before I came to Japan. The fact that it never had meat and was a big chunk of cabbage was never appealing to me. But they contain meat in Japan ... love it!


Below is a clip of us finishing off the making of the okonomiyaki.

Osaka also has its own unique type of sushi called Oshizushi. It uses cooked cooked fish, seasoned and pressed firmed into rice to make little boxes. You can see a selection of these above, quite interesting and something different.



I know these aren't Japanese, but these egg tarts were awesome! They were hot, the pastry was flaky and crisp and the custard was sweet ... heaven! It was the first time that Holly and Matt has ever had one like this and they are eternally grateful to me. Needless to say we visited this establishment a number of times ... its on Dotonbori for reference.



This place was called the Shochu (distilled alcoholic beverage) Authority, it claims to contain shochu from all regions in Japan. They had some pretty cool looking bottles too. There are many different types of shochu including rice, barley, brown sugar, etc.



These were little Doraemon pastry type things, sorta taste like a waffle. You usually finds street vendors selling these at festivals and they come in all sorts of designs, I even saw a pikachu one.



On my journeys one day I discovered a tank full of turtles, unfortunately they were right outside a restaurant. This pic shows about 5 turtles, later in the day I returned and there was only one lonesome turtle left. Hmm, they like turtles in Osaka!


On our trip to Kobe, we could leave with having some sort of beef from there. Kobe used to be the biggest port city in Japan, until is was rocked by a big earthquake in 1995. Kobe is famous for Kobe beef. Kobe beef is from the breed of wagyu cattle, raised according to strict tradition. These practices may include a diet of beer and sake, and daily massages to relieve muscle stiffness, so that it results in more tender meat. Wagyu doesn't actually mean the type of beef but really "Japanese cattle". This cattle is apparently bred so that their meat is especially marbled and fatty, creating a more tender beef. Kobe beef was a little too expensive (about 10,000 Yen or $100 a piece) so we had yaki niku (grilled meat) which is still beef from Kobe and still tasted fantastic. The smells are awesome from these places.



We started off with some salad and grilled tongue ... I know, I know ... I though eeewww at the start too, but it wasn't too bad. just grilled it and whack on some lemon, tastes good.


This is the marbled beef I'm talking about. The meat was dericiously tender and juicy. Ooohhh, how I love meat!


Our final meal on our trip was Nabe (basically japanese steamboat). We had a seafood one and boy, did they give is alot.

This was after we had devoured most of it. Look how big those scallops are!

This was the nabe cooking.

This is a tank full of all sorts of sea living goodies, you'll notice the common crayfish, flounder, a moray eel and the famous Fugu ... the poisoness fish. I didn't get to try it but in Osaka, but I will, before I leave. Its meant to be expensive and not taste that great but its something you gotta try. Hopefully, I'll live to tell the tale afterwards.

Hope all are well back home.