After living in France for nearly a decade, Toru Matsushita returned to his hometown of Osaka and took up where he left off in the French capital. Before long he was settled back into preparing and serving soba. On the surface it was a circuitous ...
The first time I had a Minoh beer was on a stool years ago at a makeshift bar out the front of its brewery in the affluent suburb of Osaka that gave the beer its name. Since then, the award-winning brewery has been transformed ...
Chef Katsutoshi Uezoma first discovered New Orleans while on a trip to New York. He took a diversion from the Big Apple to the Big Easy to go sightseeing. That one small trip led to a second, then several more. In 2012, he brought a ...
Getting in and out of Sushi Masa is much like trying to maneuver in a walk-in closet. Masa is just off Tenjinbashisuji, a shopping arcade that stretches nearly 3 kilometers, and as you might imagine there's no shortage of places to graze and gaze at ...
As everyone in Osaka and every guidebook about the city will tell you, okonomiyaki, that pancake-like Japanese dish, is this city's soul food. It's comfort food, fit for every man, woman and child. Some might argue the same for takoyaki, octopus batter balls, but ...
We are living through a renaissance for the boulangerie in Japan. In just about every city and town across the country you'll find artisanal bakers making quality baguettes, epi, croissants and pain au chocolat. Le Sucre-Coeur — a deliberate and saccharine play on the famous ...
Some fish swim in universities. Or university-run fish farms, to be exact, and upon graduation they end up as sashimi served over a bed of crushed ice. This is the fate of the kuro maguro, bluefin tuna reared and harvested by Kinki University in Kansai, ...
Not all udon is created equal. I thought it was just me who was having a hard time, until I surreptitiously looked around and saw that a few other diners were also struggling. Takeuchi Udon Ten’s noodles are thick and delicious. They are also surprisingly ...
At Kunsei Lover Fumo, smoking — of the food, that is — is so desirable that it appears twice in the name of the restaurant, first in Japanese (kunsei) and then in Italian (fumo). The lover part should be self-explanatory. Just about everything on the menu ...
It's not quite cinema-dark inside Enza, but it's not far off. Indeed, the cinema connection is apposite: In many ways Enza is as much about yakitori as it is about icons of American cinema. Framed movie posters line the walls, but the best room in ...
The menu at Soryuko, a popular Chinese restaurant in Tenma, runs to roughly about 200 items, bound together in a large laminated volume. Narrowing this down to a few choices can be dizzying, but here's a hack that will help: put down the menu ...
Using the word factory to describe a restaurant lends a sort of industrial, rugged feeling. You're ready for something heavy duty. Imagine my surprise then, when I visited Sandwich Factory, which looks and feels more like an English tea room crossed with a cafe you ...
