English Top > Foodcultures Column > Nagoya Cuisine

Nagoya Cuisine

Nagoya is well known for its distinct food culture with hatcho miso (a soybean paste unique to the area) based dishes being the most representative of Nagoya cuisine.

Miso-katsu, which is tonkatsu (breaded deep-fried pork cutlet) eaten with a thick miso-based sauce is perhaps the most well known, and miso-nikomi udon, a hot pot dish with thick noodles is another favorite miso dish.

Others include hitsumabushi, a dish with charcoal-broiled eel over white rice and soaked with dashi (soup stock); and kishimen, thick flat noodles similar to udon served hot or cold in a mild soy sauce based soup.

Tebasaki, deep-fried chicken wings seasoned with pepper and garlic powder is a great side dish that goes well with beer, and tenmusu, rice balls with deep-fried shrimp inside, are great as a snack.

Many of these foods have become more accessible outside Nagoya in recent years, especially due to the World Exposition in the Aichi prefecture, but there are still novelty foods such as ankake spaghetti, a thick noodle dish covered with a Chinese-style spicy tomato based sauce, that have yet to become famous beyond the Aichi area.