Best Dinner Spots in Osaka: Top 8 Choices

You go to Tokyo to shop, you go to Kyoto to sightsee, and you go to Osaka to eat. This is the conventional wisdom of visiting Japan’s three most famous cities, and it has been for centuries.

The Kansai region, which includes Kyoto, has historically been the center of almost all “traditional Japanese cuisine” as we know it. But while Kyoto leans more in the direction of nihon-ryori and multicourse kaiseki dining, Osaka gained a reputation for more casual fare, to be enjoyed around a table with many friends and even more drinks. 

Of course, finding an excellent kaiseki restaurant for dinner in Osaka isn’t a difficult task — but kaiseki doesn’t exactly scream Osaka. Here are some of the best restaurants where you can enjoy a typically Osaka-style dinner.

The thing about Osaka is that it has a lot of really fun, hidden spots known only to a select few. This is taken to an extreme by the recent proliferation of exclusive members-only restaurants, which have been cropping up even more frequently in the past decade or so. 

While these are most common in Tokyo, members-only restaurants are also fairly commonplace in Osaka, such as Japanese hot pot restaurant Tsuki to Suppon.

Tsuki to Suppon literally means “the moon and a softshell turtle,” which in Japanese is a saying used to refer to things that couldn’t be more different. It’s this pictorial depiction that visitors have to look out for when they wander Osaka’s Tenma district in search of the restaurant, however, given that the name of the restaurant isn’t written anywhere. 

But the restaurant takes it a little bit more literally: one of its signature dishes is a softshell turtle hot pot, or suppon-nabe, which is said to have medicinal and re-energizing properties, due to the tenacious and aggressive nature of the softshell turtle. 

Whether this is true or not, the hot pot is delicious, filled with umami and collagen, which gives the broth a gloriously thick mouthfeel. 

Hilariously, the restaurant’s other signature dish is just as amusing, and bears the name “gout hot pot,” or tsufu-nabe. In Japan, “gout” is a prefix commonly bestowed on dishes that use particularly rich ingredients, due to a supposed likelihood of contracting gout after consuming them. 

Like the suppon-nabe above, whether this is true or not is up for debate, but there is no denying that Tsuki to Suppon’s tsufu-nabe is ludicrously opulent. The ingredients change on a regular basis, but regulars in the menu include crab, monkfish liver (ankimo), ise-ebi spiny lobster, scallops, cod milt and more. 

Speaking of members-only restaurants, another of the more popular instances in Osaka is Wagyu Kappo Toraichi. 

Set on the corner of two major thoroughfares in the central Umeda district, Wagyu Kappo Toraichi is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of restaurant. The signage is deliberately designed to be as inconspicuous as possible, and grants members access to some of the best wagyu beef available in all of Japan. 

The catch is that this membership isn’t cheap — a yearly membership costs ¥30,000 as of the time of writing, and doesn’t even include the cost of a meal. And that’s not even the only barrier to entry — hopefuls have to submit an application to be considered by the managers and chefs before they can be approved.

Nonetheless, your first meal at Toraichi will make you realize that there’s a reason that it commands a membership fee and application process. The menu is a rotating roster of the best meats across Japan, from the most famous brands, including Miyazaki and Kagoshima beef from sunny Kyushu to northern legends like Sendai beef and Yonezawa beef in Tohoku.

The expert chefs cut this perfectly marbled meat — A5-grade, no less will suffice — with incredible precision. There’s no way to predict what kind of menu will appear each day, but visitors can be assured that the beef is complemented with premium accompaniments like truffle and caviar. 

The staff are friendly and always willing to answer questions about each dish, and have been known to regale guests with stories of their time in the business. If you’re lucky, one of your dishes will require a dusting of pepper, by way of a colossal pepper grinder the size of a baseball bat. It has to be seen to be believed.

Why bother listing Wagyu Kappo Toraichi if it needs a membership to enjoy, though? That’s the thing: byFood enjoys a special agreement with Toraichi, giving non-members a means to try this extremely exclusive wagyu experience. 

Find out more: Best Wagyu in Osaka: Must-Try Restaurants

Kushikatsu is definitely an Osaka signature, but what many might not know is that sukiyaki is widely credited to be a Kobe invention (just like Chunagon below). Sukiyaki Kushikatsu Haruna Honmachi brings these two quintessentially Kansai dishes together to great effect. 

But the real selling point of this restaurant isn’t just that visitors get to eat both dishes — it’s the quality of these dishes as well. See, Sukiyaki Kushikatsu Haruna Honmachi uses A5-grade Miyazaki wagyu beef for its sukiyaki — the same beef that was voted the best beef in Japan at the Wagyu Olympics (actually called the Zenkyo Competition) for 20 years in a row.

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, the pork is somehow even more exclusive. The kind used at the restaurant is an extremely exclusive kind raised only in Wakayama Prefecture, known as Ibu Biton pork, or sometimes “Eve Beauty Pork.” 

This is of a quality to rival even the likes of Spain’s famed Iberico: raised exclusively in the coastal town of Susami, Ibu Biton pigs are fed with grain mixed with plum vinegar extract, which gives their meat a unique umami flavor due to the high concentration of oleic acids. 

It’s this same pork that goes into the restaurant’s signature dish, which is a thick slice of Ibu Biton pork wrapped around a bundle of green onions. If cooked shabu-shabu style, it’s dipped into ponzu sauce, but if cooked sukiyaki style, it’s dipped into raw egg. Regardless of its preparation style, it’s a beautiful contrast of the firm pork and the crunch of fresh green onions. 

Compared to Tokyo’s stereotypical image of the hyper-fast, ultra-modern center of Japan, Osaka’s slower pace always comfortably feels a few years behind. Accordingly, if you’re looking for a retro atmosphere, there is simply no better restaurant to go to than Hanbey. 

With more than 40 restaurants across the country, most Hanbey restaurants are located in Tokyo, where they remain popular choices among both locals and tourists. But the single Hanbey in Osaka enjoys especially brisk business. 

Part of it is obviously its location on the Hankyu Higashi-dori shotengai covered shopping street, which is one of the busiest parts of Osaka — not something to be said lightly, given the fact that Dotonbori exists. 

But the other part of it is also its undeniably unique vibe. Hanbey’s whole schtick is to be a late-Showa-era izakaya, serving dishes that have long since been lost to Japan over the past few decades. 

Colorful packets of Japanese snacks are draped on the walls, and the shelves are lined with toys like blocky robots and water guns. Kitschy postwar-style beer advertisements complete the look.

“Small profit, quick returns” is the name of the game at Hanbey, which is why their course menus are affordable, and a la carte add-ons basically negligible. The array of small plates is staggering, from yakitori and kushikatsu skewers to small bowls of oden and fried chicken wings. 

It’s more of a novelty than anything else, but the small sausages cut to look like octopi — commonly featured in kids’ bento boxes — are a popular order too.

Unsurprisingly, most of Hanbey’s clientele are older: those who are looking to relive their Showa-era childhoods. But younger people aren’t out of place either, as many are curious about an era they have likely never seen before. 

Naturally, it’s not uncommon to see visitors from overseas either. It’s like going to a museum where you can eat traditional Japanese izakaya foods — what’s not to like?

Find out more: Japanese Izakaya Etiquette You Need To Know

Just like Hanbey, the Chibo restaurants are a national institution. Perhaps the most famous part about Chibo is the simple fact that it is one of the nation’s most famous okonomiyaki restaurant chains — outside of the Kansai region, Chibo is probably the most widespread purveyor of okonomiyaki, with 60 outlets across Japan. 

But what is just as notable about Chibo is the fact that it caters to so many people: the basic Chibo restaurants are for casual meals, while Chibo Elegance is a step up from there. It’s President Chibo, though, that takes okonomiyaki to its highest extreme. 

The philosophy of President Chibo is to elevate this humble street food to luxury cuisine. Instead of smoky, crowded establishments where parties huddle around a single central grill, Chibo does away with this idea entirely. Though at its core it’s still a Chibo restaurant, with okonomiyaki at its heart, a meal at President Chibo is actually more akin to teppanyaki. 

An expert chef at a teppan grill cooks up course after course of fine ingredients — A5-grade wagyu beef, kuruma-ebi Japanese tiger prawns, even ise-ebi spiny lobster — right in front of guests’ eyes. 

That’s not even getting to the okonomiyaki, the most luxurious of which uses an entire prawn, battered, flattened and grilled to a crisp to add an incredible layer of dimension. You’ve never had okonomiyaki like this before, and outside of President Chibo, you likely never will. 

Given that it started in Kansai, President Chibo actually has outlets all over Osaka, such as in the OM Nikko Hotel, Daimaru Shinsaibashi, or even in the likes of the Sheraton Miyako Hotel. But the main branch in Minami, just a block north of Dotonbori, is where it all began, and continues to be the most exemplary President Chibo experience.

As you’ve probably realised, while there is no shortage of fine dining in Osaka, in true Osaka fashion, most restaurants don’t really take themselves too seriously when it comes to food. This is especially true at Yakiniku GyuuGyuu Shinsaibashi — it serves some of the best wagyu beef available in Japan, but perhaps the founders were told not to play with their food too many times growing up, and this is their way of rebelling against it.

See, Yakiniku GyuuGyuu Shinsaibashi (sometimes spelled GyuGyu) took the already interactive nature of yakiniku and made it even more so. It’s one of the most Instagrammable yakiniku restaurants in Osaka, primarily because of its presentation. 

Perhaps its most famous is the “Jenga tower” of yakiniku: a crimson tower of wagyu beef that guests can take turns pulling blocks from, to see who will be the first to make it fall. Yet other slabs of glistening wagyu are served in a Louis Vuitton attache case.

But of course, it isn’t just novelty that drives this restaurant’s popularity. The beef itself both literally and figuratively towers over all others in terms of quality, using kuroge wagyu black beef from Miyazaki Prefecture. 

At just a 3-minute walk from Shinsaibashi Station, Yakiniku GyuuGyuu Shinsaibashi is guaranteed to have guests leaving not just with full stomachs, but also full camera rolls. 

It’s unfortunate, but when most people think of Kansai, their thoughts go straight to Osaka or Kyoto. But just west of them, bordering the Chubu region, is Hyogo Prefecture. It’s in the prefecture’s southern coast that the city of Kobe is perched, famed for Kobe beef and, of course, the Chunagon restaurants.

Chunagon is a Kobe institution that specializes in one of the most luxurious foods available in Japan: the ise-ebi spiny lobster. Each restaurant receives fresh-caught shipments of this delicious crustacean every day, and they are kept in tanks up until the moment they are cooked to maintain their freshness for as long as possible. 

While Mie and Shizuoka Prefectures are especially famous for their wild-caught ise-ebi, in the off-season, Chunagon has a contract with a dedicated lobster farm to make sure that their lobster is of the highest quality all year round.

This lobster is then prepared in a number of different ways, letting visitors experience every dimension of this extremely versatile delicacy. The starting dish is usually a cold appetizer of lobster salad, which later branches out into lobster hot pot, steamed lobster, lobster sashimi and even a lobster grilled in its shell. The possibilities are endless. 

Perhaps ironically, although Chunagon is very distinctly a Kobe franchise, its Osaka outlets — especially the one in front of Osaka Station — see traffic that rivals even the original restaurants in Kobe. It makes sense, though, if you’re already in Osaka: why go to Kobe when you could have the same excellent quality lobster right there?

Osaka is very famous for a specific skewered food, just not yakitori. Instead, that honor goes to kushikatsu (breaded meats skewered and deep-fried), sometimes called kushiage. But a late-night yakitori meal is one of the quintessential Japanese experiences; gathered in a restaurant filled with charcoal smoke, the smell of grilling meats and the raucous laughter of salarymen. 

However, in recent years — especially in Tokyo — there has been a push to elevate the humble chicken skewer to a more gourmet level, as evidenced by the surging popularity of restaurants like Yakitori Ginza I and Yakitori Sei. 

Located in central Osaka, a few blocks north of Osaka-Uehommachi Station, Yakitori Matsuoka is one of the most notable restaurants at the forefront of this movement in Kansai. Having landed itself on the Michelin Selected list in the Michelin Guide Osaka 2024, it’s surely a portent of greater things to come. Chef Matsuoka Hiroki serves an omakase course menu that intersperses small plates of chicken with skewers. 

He uses only free-range kuro-o jidori chickens from Kagoshima — what’s essentially the chicken equivalent of legendary kuroge wagyu beef — and cooks them over high-heat, smokeless white bincho-tan charcoal for a flameless sear that seals in the juices of the chicken and gives it a beautiful crust. 

The best part? Having worked in the restaurant business in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, Chef Matsuoka’s English is just as flawless as his yakitori. More than anything else, he loves to talk about his ultra-rare sake and whisky collection. 

Just one mention of the word “Juyondai” — a one-of-a-kind variety from Niigata Prefecture — and his eyes light up. It’s a waste not to ask for a sake or whisky pairing to go with your skewers, so make sure you make the most of his pairing advice.

The only real downside to Yakitori Matsuoka is the fact that it was already popular before its induction into the Michelin Guide, and 2024 brought with it an insane surge of popularity. Reservations have never been harder — but you might just get lucky.

Discover Michelin-starred restaurants in Osaka or see a different side of the city’s food and culture with a guided Osaka food tour.