We're Chasing a Plate and tonight we're in Osaka and it's Saturday night so it's
time for a night at the pub or an izakaya. Let's go.
izakaya or Japanese pubs can be really small intimate affairs or they can be big and
rowdy our neighborhood one- medium size but it's a lot of fun just like any pub
in the west, izakaya offer a range of drinks. The Japanese love their
whisky highballs so it's a shot of whisky and a mixer
and I've got a ginger ale and whisky highball it's so good. I've gone with
beer and it is one heck of a big beer this is a seven hundred ml Suntory
which is one of the real simple everyday beers here in Japan but it's so easy to drink it's
huge and it is a ridiculously good price particularly at this izakaya this
is one of the cheaper places we have seen in our whole three weeks in Japan
speaking of the three weeks in Japan we've done heaps of videos we've got
more to come so don't forget to pop down below hit subscribe and hit the little
bell so you get notifications when we post videos. So izakaya
specialize in different things it might be yakitori which are grilled chicken
skewers or it could be fish these guys specialize in tempura which is lightly
battered and deep-fried stuff so we've ordered to start us off some eggplant and some
pumpkin. What you do with tempura is that you dip it into a dipping sauce which they
pour for you at the table and the dipping sauce is usually made
up of soy, mirin which is a sweet rice wine and also- what else is in there?
dashi stock and you add some grated daikon into the dipping sauce. I'm going to try
the pumpkin first. The sauce is just really really light and mmm when I say
deep-fried the batter is so thin and the vegetables are just perfectly
cooked so there's no stodginess or oiliness about this. It's just beautiful pumpkin
you can just really taste the flavor of the vegetable.
I'm going to grab some of this eggplant get it straight in the sauce I love how thin the batter is
Ohh the eggplant is so soft but it still has enough texture that you can like bite into it
that batter is the finest most dry batter you can imagine I mean it's just
heavenly, that beautiful sweet flavor then that
thin batter that sauce is incredible. Love it- beer's going down well izakaya are
great places to check out.
I love fried chicken
and there is nothing that makes me happier when I'm drinking than to be
eating fried chicken so we have ordered tori karaage usually in Japan karaage
is chicken thigh and it's just beautifully deep fried it's boneless and this
comes with a huge blob of mayo which I've just swiped the chicken through
I cannot wait to try this
this is my heaven right here the batter is really thin and the chicken is
just so juicy and so full of flavour. If you're in Japan you have to eat karaage.
and when you order a beer in this izakaya they have a robot basically to
pour your beer so you end up with the most perfectly poured beer in the world
tilts it slowly then it squirts a little head on top and it is such a perfect
beer and it's the most Jpanese thing in the world that there's a robot pouring
beer. I love it!
So we've ordered our second round of drinks. I've ordered cold sake. I'm not
actually sure what type of sake it is because on the menu it literally just says
hot sake or cold sake but it does go down
very easily it's getting really busy in this izakaya
it's basically all full. The way it works is that you share all your dishes and
you eat progressively so you don't everything at once you just order
sort of plates as you go and by rights you're supposed to start with the smaller
dishes like edamame or cold tofu and move on to heavier dishes like yakitori
so the grilled chicken skewers or fried chicken we just love fried chicken so much that
we ordered it first.
now we've ordered an entire fish, there's something about izakayas that's a little
bit difficult and we've struggled too with this during our time in Japan so the
menus are entirely in Japanese pretty much exclusively they all serve
different stuff, they're a little bit scary almost like when you're standing
outside they don't even say anything on the outside as to what they are
sometimes it's just a little door with a curtain so it can be a little
intimidating to come inside so with this fish we've ordered it
because we saw other people in this restaurant were having it and we basically had
to point so we can't communicate with any of the staff here we've just gotta
go with it but it's like traveling it's one of the joys of traveling is
experiencing things, opening doors to other worlds and sometimes you have to
go out of your way to open those doors and this fish is a really good example of
that because we can't read any of that menu, we can't talk to any of these staff
so we just have to like keep an eye on what other people are ordering and now
we've got this fish so it looks a bit like a trout almost so I'm just going to grab some
it's trout-y looking it's got a little bit of pink, looks pretty oily
I'm just gonna try it hmm it's really salty- salty and fishy but in a
really nice way we did to be honest we used Google Translate on the menu
which is pretty much useless when it comes to food but it did say something
about there is a fish on here and it says something about aged or dried something
like that and I think this is definitely dried by the look of it and the taste of
it, it's flaky like a trout, very salty like I
said but very tender, that's a beautiful fish and such a cool example of just going
for it just trying to communicate the waitress here is just the most lovely girl and we just smiled at
each other and things are working out. We've ordered another round of tempura, some onion,
ebi which is prawn and a tiny little fish called was called ki-su I don't know whether that's the
variety of fish but it's very cute I'm going to try what I'm most excited about
which is the prawn so I'm going to grab the prawn, dip it in my tempura dipping
sauce which I've added more daikon too this looks amazing
The prawn is so delicate and its literally just been popped in the deep fryer for
a second. It is cooked to perfection it's still crisp,
it's juicy and that batter is so light.
So as Thomas said sometimes wandering into izakaya can be a little intimidating
but the reward is definitely worth the effort, some of our best nights in Japan have been
spent in izakaya. And this was one of them. So much fun so unlike a pub
we're used to- look how bright it is, it's absolutely glowing in here
but it's Saturday night everyone's having fun, drinks are cheap, such a cool
experience so step into one, go for it just point, decipher, use google
translate it will work out so don't stress, have at least one night at
at izakaya in Japan when you visit. It's a quintessential Japanese experience. It's
brilliant. We hope we've inspired you to eat and
explore like a traveler not a tourist. Thank you so much for watching we'll see
you next time. Sayonara!