J.J. O'Donoghue - The Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Jun 24, 2014

Baan Suki: Relishing the spice of Thai cuisine

One of the most memorable, cheapest and spiciest dishes I've ever had was also the first bite I ate in Thailand. It was a few years back, on an island south of Bangkok. We had just arrived at our hotel and bolted to the beach. A cook had a cart set up (it was more or less a wok) on the sand and the aroma was more distracting than the myriad bodies dumped beside the sea. I had a papaya salad. It nearly blew my head off, but man alive, what a welcome to Thailand.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Jun 24, 2014

City Bakery: A taste of New York at Grand Front Osaka, but only just

At City Bakery in Osaka (and also in Tokyo), there's an eclectic mix of what you would expect from an New York bakery (brownies and chocolate-chip cookies) as well as items you may not expect (pretzel croissants and blueberry corn muffins) and a few that don't meet expectations — namely the scones.

LIFE / Food & Drink

Jun 10, 2014

The Kyoto neighborhood where dessert is the main course

Kitayama is five stops on the subway from downtown Kyoto, but it might as well be a million miles away for the tourists who trudge around the city in search of Kyoto tropes: temples, shrines, teahouses and geishas who are more than likely tourists dressed up for the day.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Jun 10, 2014

What's: Fine Matsusaka beef in a restaurant as unusual as its name

Culinary epiphanies don't happen often, but when they do, they are food for thought. I had one recently dining on prime Japanese beef and it was an experience that, on reflection, recalled a childhood event. Not that I grew up eating wagyū — far from it; rather, the portion of seared beef reminded me about the sadness of finishing something that is so gorgeous, so delicious, that you never want it to be over. Yet, every bite is a game of give and take, pleasure versus trepidation as the end draws nearer.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Jun 10, 2014

Marumo Kitchen: Bowls with soul

In the DNA of almost every Japanese building there is a gene for "renewal." And so it was inevitable that Porta, the underground mall at Kyoto Station, would close earlier this year for a revamp. When it reopened it was out with the old and in with the new — and yet another Starbucks. Among the new tenants is Marumo Kitchen, a Tokyo blow-in; after Shinjuku and Toshima, Kyoto Station is Marumo's third outpost.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

May 27, 2014

Que Rico: Bless this tasty Mexican mess

In the spirit of creating fashionable statements that promptly wither out of mode ("Orange is the new black," "Spring is the new summer"), here's one for the list: In Osaka, "Tenma is the new Fukushima." The two areas have much in common: Both fan out in warrens and lanes beneath the city's elevated Loop Line, with Umeda Station as a midpoint ensuring a constant supply of the hungry, thirsty and weary; both embody the quintessential Osaka eat-till-you-drop spirit of kuidaore (among salarymen, anyway); and both are home to Que Rico, a popular Mexican hole-in-the-wall eatery.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

May 27, 2014

Shiogensui: Ramen worth its salt

The shinkansen isn't the only thing connecting Okayama to Osaka these days. You can add shio (salt) ramen to that list. I had my first bowl of Shiogensui ramen in Soja, Okayama Prefecture. It's also where I had my second bowl, on another occasion, before I finally made my way to the source, the original Shiogensui store, not far from Shin Osaka Station.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

May 13, 2014

Café Indépendants

You don't have to be hip to enter Café Indépendants, but it helps. Located in the basement of the old Mainichi Shimbun Kyoto bureau, Indépendants is the kind of cafe frequented by the artsy set. There is a version of this cafe in every city all over the world. In Cork, where I grew up, that cafe was mostly populated by skaters, goths and loners working on the 50th draft of their first novel. In Kyoto, Indépendants is staffed by models and artists between jobs and frequented in the main by college students.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

May 13, 2014

Nanaezushi: Edo-kei sushi without the sticker shock

We need to talk about sushi. First, any discussion of sushi isn't worth its wasabi without a mention of the perspicacious octogenarian Jiro Ono, star of the documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," about his Michelin-starred restaurant in Ginza — you know, the one that Obama took Abe to, or was it the other way round? To wit: The documentary I recommend, I haven't eaten at Sukiyabashi Jiro (although I would like to), but before that I would like to point out that there are many, many excellent sushi establishments in Japan that don't work out at roughly ¥1,000 a minute. Here's one.

CULTURE / Art

Apr 28, 2014

Kyoto photography show pushes the frame

Mars has landed in Japan and is best viewed from a beanbag in the annex of The Museum of Kyoto. "Mars, a Photographic exploration" is the worthy headline event at this year's Kyotographie International Photography Festival, which brings together remarkable photos of the red planet, with imagery captured by NASA probes and distilled into photographs by French artist Xavier Barral. Seen together with Shiro Takatani's captivating video installation, this is an exhibition that will be remembered long after the festival finishes mid May.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Apr 22, 2014

Gohanya Isshin: a diverse menu topped by fries that wax poetic

Isshin is deceptively big, dimly lit and madly busy; but the staff are on their game. More impressive is that the kitchen produces such high-quality fare in such a demanding work environment.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Apr 22, 2014

Cafe Ibaraki Yu: Former bathhouse offers a bite of the old days

The city of Ibaraki in the north of Osaka is home to Tadao Ando's Church of the Light, a modernist concrete masterpiece. Out of the spotlight, another architect in Ibaraki has been quietly but busily breathing life into buildings whose glory days would otherwise be behind them. Cafe Ibaraki Yu might well be the finest example.

LIFE / Food & Drink

Apr 8, 2014

Sharpen your kitchen skills with No Recipes

The Internet has been good to Marc Matsumoto. In 2007 he started putting his recipes online while working full-time in marketing in New York. He watched traffic to his blog grow, interest percolate.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Apr 8, 2014

Inakatei: Local Kyoto cuisine heavy on the fish and veg

When faced with a six-page menu allied with a supplementary page loaded with specials and all in a language that makes less sense to you than abstract art, what do you do? Get up and leave is one answer, as proven by the nearby holidaying couple, American I assumed by accent and attire, who left shortly after sitting down owing to their zero comprehension of the menu at Inakatei.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Apr 8, 2014

Elk: Who doesn't eat soup with their pancakes?

Here's an odd couple: soup and pancakes. But this is how Elk, a small but expanding chain of cafes, advertises itself. The day I ate at Elk the pancake crowd was definitely in the ascendancy; there were a few soup eaters like myself, but we were in the minority. And speaking of minorities, men were so thin on the ground that when another guy came in I thought about sidling over and hanging out with him, but he had his girlfriend with him for that.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Mar 25, 2014

La Tepparnya: Izakaya fare with a European twist

A few years back I spent an insufferable summer in an insufferable apartment (in a room as big as a shoebox), which I would rather forget than remember, in Juso, which is just beside the Yodo River in Osaka. Luckily, I found La Tepparnya, an izakaya that became my surrogate home. With good timing, I returned after a long absence to find it celebrating its six-year anniversary.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Mar 25, 2014

Sumo Cha-ya Terao: Spirit of sumo in every bowl

Chankonabe is wedded to sumo in the same way as whiskey is to the Wild West and cowboys; they're both fuel for fightin'. Terao Tsunefumi, the man behind this eponymous restaurant, is a well-respected sumo wrestler who had a career in the ring spanning 20 years, long by any measure in sports. For his second act he opened a pair of nabe (hot pot) restaurants, one each in Tokyo and Osaka.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Mar 11, 2014

Ristorante t.v.b: Italian fare worthy of affection

Lunch at Ristorante t.v.b is a measured and timely affair. While it wasn't as long as an opera, it was lengthy, stretching to nearly two hours. This is slow food; I mean that in the flattering and not the pejorative sense. Good food takes time.

LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Mar 11, 2014

Malebranche: French toast and a dozen matcha confections

I have a bread maker and often have leftover heels of bread, which are ideal for French toast. In theory. In my kitchen, my pain perdu, as the French rightly call it, is more often than not flat, dreary and sans raison d'etre. Which makes the French toast at Malebranche all the better, and mine all the more depressing.

LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS

Feb 25, 2014

Hanakujira: Steamy scenes from the oden pot

Hanakujira is an all-society restaurant. At 5 o'clock on a Monday evening, the air still frigid with cold shock after a recent snowstorm, Osaka's great and ordinary are packed inside (and queuing outside) to get close to the steaming vats of oden. There are families with young ones, friends, office ladies, grandparents, college kids, dating couples and the ubiquitous coterie of salarymen. When my companion and I show up there are only two seats, or stools, unoccupied, close to the door at the end of the counter — but at this oden institution, the counter is where you want to be, especially if you are a first timer.

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