Name: 5 Must Try Dishes in Japan's Food Capital 🇯🇵 48 Hours in Osaka
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T18:01:16.000Z
Duration: 25 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Osaka, it's not just the nightlife capital of the nation.

Adverbs of degree

It's not just my favorite city in the country.

Adverbs of manner

It's affectionately known as the kitchen of Japan.

And we're about to eat our way through that very kitchen.

To that effect, I brought the one, the only, Uncle Natsuki.

If Tokyo is the refined, clean cut salary man of Japan, Osaka is the cooler younger brother who always turns up to work with a hangover.

Louder, friendlier, rough around the edges.

Bigger personalities demand bigger flavors.

And coming up, we're going in search of five.

As Natsuki's attempt to cook takoyaki fried octopus balls turns into.

We witness a chef do something rather special with a cut of wagyu and a spectacular charcoal grill.

And we see how Osaka's staple food gets dialed up to 11 in a rather luxurious setting.

Hopefully, by the end of our investigation, you'll have some ideas of where to hit up the next time you're in town.

Booking a decent restaurant in Japan is about as fun as falling down the stairs.

And that's because websites either look like they were made on Microsoft paint before the fall of the Berlin Wal, or many restaurants just straight up only accept reservations over the phone.

And if you don't speak Japanese, well, get ready to rediscover the definition of awkward.

But thankfully, those days are over because we got this, the brand new Tabalog app from Japan's largest restaurant reservation platform.

And not only are they sponsoring this trip to Osaka, but

we use it to find the best restaurants in the entire city.

Could be the city, could be just places around you.

And you can see all of the best restaurants in your neighborhood.

You can book the day, you can book the time.

Maybe there's a certain dish you want to try.

Or if you want something really special, hit up here.

And this is the Hyakumeiten, the top 100 restaurants by category and region.

And in fact, Natsuki and I are hitting up one of these places, Nikisho Nakatahunten, which was selected last year for being one of the top 100 yakiniku restaurants in West Japan.

And it'll become clear very quickly just how and why this restaurant won that award.

But what makes Tablok really good is, as we all know, in the west, we either love something or hate something.

In Japan, it's a lot more balanced than that.

3 is considered to be good, 4 is considered to be amazing, and

5 out of 5 is so good, it is simply unattainable.

But that waiting, that review system is why Tabalog has become so popular.

It's out now on iOS and Android, or you can check it linked in the description box below.

But don't fumble around on web browsers and awkward phone calls.

Find the best stuff effortlessly and book it now on the brand new tablog app.

Okonomiyaki literally means cook it how you like it.

A dense, savory pancake you can stuff in literally anything you can find lying around the kitchen.

While in Hiroshima, the local style of okonomiyaki is stacked with the precision of a civil engineer in Osaka, it all goes into a mixing bowl before hitting the grill.

Anything goes with the Osaka iteration, consisting of a heavy cabbage infused batter.

Once fully cooked, it's topped with a tangy and rather fruity Worcestershire based sauce, smothered in mayonnaise and topped with bonito flakes and dried ao nori seaweed.

Still, given the complexity of the ingredients, cooking it just right is no easy task.

Which is why we've come to Harunohana to meet Chef Umeda, who, having flipped thousands of pancakes, is a veteran of the world of Osaka.

Over here we've got okonomiyaki with noodles.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

5 Must Try Dishes in Japan's Food Capital 🇯🇵 48 Hours in Osaka

literally

awkward

sort

stick