![]() ![]() “I hated the smell of the town, the way people talked,” Moriyama wrote in “Dark Picture,” a 1996 essay republished in Osaka. I find that book in the library of the Flag, a boutique hotel in Shinsaibashi. The acclaimed photographer Daido Moriyama grew up in Osaka around that time so iconic was the rebuilt Tsutenkaku, he would later put it on the cover of his 2016 book, Osaka, a blinding white rocket against a nighttime sky. Once the “new” tower was complete and employment in Shinsekai evaporated, many of the construction workers became homeless. It looks like a mosaic of iridescent tiles and hits with comic-book ZAPS! and POWS! of vinegar and brine - flavours insistent enough to, however briefly, rouse those workers from an endless grind of hard days. Ikegami orders the mackerel, and within minutes, Chef Doi-san passes the sushi across the counter. Shop the best travel experiences here From left: Yamatoya, a classic sushi bar in Shinsekai banana cake at the bakery-restaurant Yohaku | Image Credit: Andrea Fazzari Yamatoya specialises in pressed and square-cut box sushi, traditionally made with thrifty cuts that could be cooked, preserved, or treated to last in the lunch pails of the labourers who flocked to Shinsekai in 1956 to reconstruct Tsutenkaku. ![]() Shaking our umbrellas, we push into Yamatoya, a hideout populated by pachinko pit bosses and ladies with soft packs of cigarettes clutched in sharp sets of nails. “Osakans dine with athletic fervour and passion, and everyone I meet wants to know - demands to know, really - the same thing: ‘What have you eaten?’” Today, Shinsekai is rough around the edges but perfectly safe, though it does help to have a guide like Ikegami, who leads culinary tours of the area for Arigato Travel. But a fire destroyed it during World War II, and the new world began a slow slide into an underworld. The name means New World, an optimistic prophecy for a Western-inspired future epitomised by Tsutenkaku Tower, which at 210 feet was the tallest building in Asia when it was constructed in 1912. None of that is untrue, particularly in and around Shinsekai. Here’s what you’ve probably heard about Osaka - if you’ve heard anything at all, given Tokyo’s and Kyoto’s decades of tourism dominance. Ikegami eyes the second helping on my plate and gently reminds me, “We have a lot more to eat.” The Netflix-famous Izakaya Toyo’s blowtorched tuna cheeks, which make for good TV but butane-flavoured tuna my meal is saved by chain-smoking chef-owner Toyoji Chikumoto’s zany showmanship and his chutoro maki rolled up as casually as a yoga mat with gutsy tears of shiso.Īdd too much okonomiyaki to the list. Osakans dine with athletic fervour and passion, and everyone I meet wants to know - demands to know, really - the same thing: “What have you eaten?” I tell them: Two syllables cannot encompass the diversity and quality of the cooking, from hot and saucy takoyaki on the street to tradition-steeped kaiseki at the Michelin-starred Nishitenma Nakamura, where chef-owner Akemi Nakamura tenderises squid sashimi with knife strokes as delicate as calligraphy. You can’t just call Japan’s third-largest city a food town. A guide to eating and drinking at the best places in Osaka From left: Masuhiro “Julian” Yokota at his bakery, Yotsubashi Pain cycling in Minamisenba, a popular shopping neighbourhood | Image Credit: Andrea Fazzari This Japanese Island Is Hiding Some Of The Country’s Best Hot Springs. Over the next 20 minutes, she periodically reappears to add shrimp, steak, and pork flip the pancake and paint it with mayo and a sweet, tangy brown sauce fry up a sunny-side egg to slide on top and finally, bury it all in dancing bonito flakes. With the muscle memory and blasé demeanour of someone who has done this ten thousand times, our server dumps a bowl of shaved cabbage and batter onto the hot, hissing grill built into our table. Seated by a rain-lashed window, my guide, Noriyuki Ikegami, and I are safe inside Tsuruhashi Fugetsu, a chain specialising in another Osakan treasure, okonomiyaki. Ursula-san already clutches takoyaki (octopus fritters) and kushikatsu (deep-fried skewers) in her white-suckered tentacles but, unsurprisingly for a native Osakan, she’s still hungry.īetween us is a checkerboard lane and a monsoon. ![]() She lords over the second floor of a restaurant in Osaka’s Shinsekai quarter, a pastiche of Paris and Coney Island erected in the early 1900s, neglected by the midcentury and respected today for its retro-futurist architecture and first-class fast food. ![]()
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