The legendary izakaya/street food vendor in Japan’s third biggest city Osaka, Izakaya Toyo, offers drop-dead local Japanese seafood and live-fire cooking entertainment. *I last visited this place in 2020.
If you watch anything about Japanese food on Netflix, you might have already known this Japanese eatery: Izakaya Toyo. Izakaya Toyo appeared in the Netflix show, Street Food: Asia, in 2019. The sensational visual of the chef, Toyoji Chikumoto, grilling seafood with a burner, which almost looks like attacking the grill with a flamethrower, went viral. And that’s how Izakaya Toyo’s fame was set on fire. Now the chef (and the izakaya as a whole) has become a living legend and is one of the top destinations for travelers and foodies in Japan.
As Izakaya Toyo says in its name, it is an izakaya which is the most quintessential form of restaurant in Japan. Izakaya Toyo is counted as a street food vendor, thanks to Street Food: Asia, but its true form is a “tachinomi izakaya,” translated as a “standing bar izakaya” in Japanese. Frankly, it’s an izakaya without seats (e.g., pubs without seats, diners without seats). And its specialty is seafood.
To sum up, Izakaya Toyo is a rustic food stand, tachinomi seafood izakaya, on a street in a residential area in the third biggest city in Japan, Osaka which I consider Los Angeles of Japan. In that case, Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, is New York City. To think of it, I guess a lechonera in the US would explain what Izakaya Toyo in Japan stands for.
Menus are in Japanese. They offer drinks, appetizers and sides, set menus, and specials. It seemed that a set menu was a deal for many customers. Seemingly the most popular set menus were Tuna (¥2,400), Fatty tuna (¥2,850), and Extra fatty tuna (¥3,200). So get ready to savor tuna at Izakaya Toyo. I chose Fatty tuna (“toro” in Japanese).
A plate of fatty tuna sashimi, sushi, and salmon caviar ikura, with a dash of wasabi.
Crab meat and scallops salad with scallions.
Each set menu consists of 2 dishes: a plate and a salad. The plate consists of a sushi roll of the day, sashimi of your choice of tuna, and a heap of salmon caviar ikura. The salad has chilled, boiled crab meat and scallops, roughly severed scallions, and a Japanese ponzu sauce. The chunky sashimi pieces were tasty but not completely thawed. It was a bit too wild for me to bite them on a chilly winter street (it was January when I visited). The salad was pleasantly briny and delicious.
I also had an appetizer of an eel and cucumber sushi roll called “Una-Q maki” (unagi/eel – kyuri/cucumber maki/roll). This Una-Q maki, which was unusually and generously thick for a ¥600/$4.60 sushi roll, tasted like a remarkably delicious supermarket sushi roll in the US. And it was thicker than any American sushi roll I had eaten in my life, which was oddly fulfilling.
A broiled tuna cheek is the specialty that activates the flamethrower of the chef. Once the calls for the dish reach a certain point, he starts the job. It almost functioned as a well-expected performance (as I expected so bad). Next to the grill he stood, an assistant/waiter set an ice bucket, and then he finally fired (the burner at tuna cheek on the grill). His left hand kept firing while his right hand worked back and forth between the ice bucket and the grill to flip the tuna cheek.
Thumbs up to the food and chef. He never forgot to entertain curious shutterbugs like me. He was as charming and friendly as other waiters tendering me and other local customers well and equally. And most importantly, the charred succulent broiled tuna cheek was phenomenal. For this, I will skate over the izakaya’s cash-only policy and bring money rolls.
The broiled tuna cheek.
Izakaya Toyo | 3-2-26 Higashinodamachi, Miyakojima Ward, Osaka, 〒534-0024, Japan
Fatty tuna set menu: ¥2,850 / $21.90 / £17.80 / €20.40
Una-Q maki: ¥600 / $4.60 / £3.80 / €4.30
Broiled tuna cheek: ¥450 / $3.50 / £2.80 / €3.20
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Izakaya Toyo | 3-2-26 Higashinodamachi, Miyakojima Ward, Osaka, 〒534-0024, Japan
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