9 Local Delicacies Worth Tasting in Osaka

Osaka's best-known specialist crab restaurant, with three branches on Dotonbori alone showing its explosive appeal. You can't miss the giant crab replica above the door. While Kani Douraku restaurants can be found in cities all over Japan, the one on Dotonbori in Osaka is without doubt the most famous.

The restaurant offers every delicious variety of crab you could possibly want, from straight crab to set menus, sashimi, steamed, grilled, tempura, sushi, or hotpot. The lunchtime set menu is a better value than in the evening, with prices starting from 2000 yen at lunch compared to 6000 yen for dinner.

Hamafuji in Kuromon Ichiba market is an iconic restaurant of over 90 years' standing that specializes in fugu, or blowfish. The chef cooks up fresh blowfish soup using a proudly honed technique and with a flavor that can only be experienced in the original restaurant.

The dish most worth trying here is blowfish sashimi, which is sliced into transparent thin strips and has a very different texture from normal fish. The blowfish hotpot includes the skin, bones, and meat of the fish, accompanied by vegetables. And when you've finished your hotpot, the waiters will serve you up porridge with egg, nori (seaweed), and spring onion, which has a soft, clean taste while still brimming with the flavor of the original blowfish soup.

Okonomiyaki (savory pancake) is a favorite local snack. And the recipe behind it that people love so much? Cabbage combined with whatever meat or seafood flavors you like, add an egg, pour on some special sauce, and there you have a taste like no other. One freshly grilled okonomiyaki, one in-season strawberry ice-cream--the ideal combination.

Tsuruhashi Fugetsu is a famous okonomiyaki restaurant that has been in business for over 60 years. It's a chain restaurant, so there are a number of branches across Osaka. In the restaurant you can watch the chefs grill your pancake just the way you like it, crispy on the outside and full of flavor inside.

Japanese sushi is divided into the plainer edomae (found in eastern regions) and the more pungent style of the western regions, for which the fish is usually cured or boiled and grilled to give it a distinct flavor. Boxed sushi (hako) is the latter type.

Yoshino Sushi is one of Osaka's most famous hako (boxed) sushi restaurants, a time-honored brand that began business back in the Edo period (1841), offering sushi with a pure, fresh flavor. Once you're used to edomae, you may as well try switching tastes in Osaka--and because hako keeps well, lots of Japanese buy boxes of it here as gifts.

This small, 130-year-old restaurant selling only red bean soup was made famous by the Japanese television series Meoto zenzai, adapted from the 1940 novel of the same name by Sakunosuke Oda, and this dessert is now an unmissable part of any visit to Osaka.

Meoto zenzai is the name of the dessert itself ("zenzai" meaning sticky rice ball), and each serving includes two bowls of red bean soup, so it's meant for sharing. It also portends good luck in love: it's said that spouses who have tasted this restaurant's soup will be devoted to each other, while singles who have it will enjoy good luck in love.

Japanese wagyu cattle are the Matzusaka, Kobe, and Omi breeds reared in the west of the country. Of these, the highest-grade and most expensive is the Matsuzaka beef from Mie prefecture, which has been praised as "a work of art among meats."

The Matsuzaka braised beef restaurant in Hozenji Yokocho serves some of Osaka's most famous braised Matsuzaka. In 2019, it was voted as the favorite restaurant of foreign tourists. An English menu is provided.

Kinryu Ramen is a typical Osakan ramen (noodle) chain. You know you've found it when you see the giant dragon sign on Dotonbori. It only sells two types of ramen: the in-house special and char siu. It is self-service through a vending machine, and is open 24 hours for any night owls looking for a late-night snack. Anyone who's sampled Ichiran ramen elsewhere in Japan ought to give Kinryu a try when they get to Osaka.

Takoyaki (grilled octopus balls) is one of the everyday local delicacies that visitors to Osaka simply mustn't miss--there is a huge choice available, with over 10 restaurants on Dotonbori alone. The most popular is Otako (本家日本一大たこ), an old favorite that has been in business for 40 years. Massive chunks of tentacle are visible in the takoyaki and they taste fantastic, so naturally there's always a long line out the door.