【Osaka Oden】11 Best Oden Restaurants in Umeda

We crave for something hot to eat when it gets chilly. Then you should go and eat hot oden that makes you happy. Did you know different restaurants have different ingredients and different kinds of dashi (Japanese soup stock)?

This article introduces superb restaurants around Umeda in Osaka, where you can enjoy oden. You can also have good oden in Nakatsu or Fukushima, and the extra chapter gives you information about oden restaurants in Esaka or Minoh (a little bit far, though).

Which restaurants do you want to go? Let’s check them out!

Around Umeda (Umeda, Nishi Umeda, Higashi Umeda, Kitashinchi)

1.Shiroi Oden Maruki Saketen【Kitashinchi】

This restaurant is located on the B2 floor in Osaka Ekimae Daiichi Building near JR Kitashinchi Station, and is famous for oden with white sauce.

There are ten seats along an L-shaped counter, and behind the counter is another one where you can drink alcohol while standing. Two very friendly women are running this place and you can have a fun conversation with them, so I enjoyed dining there.

I ordered white oden.

Picture on the left：Japanese radish, the classic one. It is a western style of oden, as it is served with the oden soup mixed with white sauce. It was very creamy and had a mild taste.
Picture on the right：This one is Asari Clams. Powdered cheese is sprinkled on it, and it had an Italian taste. It was very good!

Kyoto-style oden is very good, because the ingredients soak up the transparent, beautiful soup and they are full of flavor. The upper right picture is meatballs of chicken that was recommended by the hostess, and it was top-notch! It is definitely a must eat! You eat them with a lot of mustard paste put on it, and the combination of soft meatballs with strong flavor was superb.
The lower right picture is a pouched green onion. Flavors of the soup and the green onion immediately spread in your mouth, and it goes well with sake.

This is also a recommended one, Japanese radish with melted cheese. The onion chip on top gives accent to the dish. You will love the combination of onion chips and the ingredient. This also goes really well with sake!

Picture on the left： This potato salad oden is warm, and it can feel every ingredient in the potato salad. You should eat this with sake!
Anyways, I drank a lot today as well. Every dish is very good, and I will definitely come here again.

Menu

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2. Suehiro【Umeda】

This is a small restaurants with twelve counter seats. You may want to make a reservation because this place gets full soon.

It is a bit hard to locate, but you go into the alley that the arrow points to.

Go all the way to the end and you will find the place on the left.

The counter is U-shaped. The oden is simmered in the center, and the waiters are inside it. A waiter will tell you where you put down your bags and everything, so follow their instructions.

Japanese radish and beef tendon. Both of them are very tender and they have soaked up flavors. The Japanese radish is the best.

Picture on the left：Whale, konjac, green onion, and shiitake mushroom
Picture on the right：Thick fried tofu, and a fish dumpling

All the ingredients are full of flavor, with oden soup in it. The rich flavor and dashi will spread in your mouth. You will like the little sweetness and the flavor that comes after it.

Upper Left：This one was for Hors d’oeuvre. Today we had marinade mackerel. The vinegar added a good taste.
Upper Right：This one is a fish salad seasoned with vinegar and miso. I liked the plain sweetness.
Lower Left：Eggplant in a mild broth, had a salty sweet taste.
Lower Right：It might be hard to see, but the Japanese omelet was voluminous.

Menu

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The menu is quite simple. The oden in the upper row is the basics, and seasonal ingredients are written on the white board.

Name：Suehiro
Address：2-2-8 Shibata, Kita-ku, Osaka City
TEL： 06-6373-1714
Hours：5:00p.m.～10:00p.m.
Closed on Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, and national holiday Opens every day without days off.
Access：5 min on foot from Hankyu Umeda Station

3.Oden and Sanzoku-yaki Ito 【Higashi Umeda】

This restaurant is located near Taiyu-ji Temple in East Umeda with the eye-catching paper lanterns. This place features oden and Sanzoku-yaki, which is grilled chicken with soy-based sauce. You can enjoy additive-free oden and sanzoku-yaki.

There is a counter and a grill, and you can see them grilling over the charcoal. At the back you can see table seats and tatami (straw mat) seats with a roof over your head.

This is additive-free oden, and I ordered Japanese radish, an egg, and Sanzoku meat ball. The Japanese radish is very tender. The unique meat ball is made of chicken cartilage, neck meat, and minced chicken. I love the texture of the chicken cartilage and the rich flavor!

I ordered other ingredients of oden, which are grilled tofu, octopus, kikuna (chrysanthemum leaves), and a pouched green onion. They are served cut, so it is very easy to share with others. I particularly recommend kikuna! I liked it because it is tender, and not so bitter.

The one in the front is savory chicken grilled on straw, and the other one is sanzoku karaage (deep-fried chicken). Grilling the chicken locks in the umami flavor, and it is so tender!
Be careful with the Sanzoku because they have bones, but it is juicy and tasty!

Grilling over charcoal, it was on fire!

Menu

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As well as additive-free oden and sanzoku-yaki, they have salad and kasu-udon (udon in a soup containing deep-fried beef intestine) for finishing off.

4.Odenbar 【Higashi Umeda】

This is a compact restaurant in Osaka Dai-san Building with 12 counter seats.

The owner is very friendly, and it is a cozy little place that you rarely find in station buildings.
You can enjoy two types of oden: Kyoto-style oden and white oden.
The white oden is served with white sauce and dashi mixed, which tastes like Japanese white stew.
Beef tendon dashi curry, and sesame sauce udon served during lunch time are also popular.

The classic Kyoto-style Japanese radish oden is tender, and has soaked up the flavor. I like how they serve in different dishes for different ingredients.

The beef tendon is also tender and has a rich flavor, which goes well with sake.

This is the white oden, wasabi-flavored avocado. The cold white dashi has a wasabi flavor, and you will like it. It is not too heavy because the white sauce has dashi in it, and the combination of the creamy avocado and the rich flavor of cold white dashi is fantastic.

I would recommend stir-fried cabbage to everyone. The cabbage is cooked upon order, and is best with the white dashi. Cabbage is savory and very sweet after it is stir-fried.

Menu

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They have carefully selected menu such as thickly cut bacon and cheese tofu, salted and fermented red snapper, ochazuke (rice with tea poured on it) and curry, which you would want to eat if you’re drinking alcohol.

5. Oden and nibbles Sakamoto 【Higashi Umeda】

It is located in the building called Maruichi Building in Togano-cho.

This place is on Michelin Guide 2016 Bib Gourmand! It is hidden restaurant with 15 counter seats and one table seats. It looks like a café or a bar with beautiful interior. A woman is running this place, and the friendly and heartwarming conversation with her and the delicate foods make you want to come here many times!

The oden served here includes the classic ones, local specialties, homemade and creative dishes, and the prices start at 100 yen. The dashi is thin enough for the flavor of each ingredient stands out, and each is well thought out. You can enjoy dishes throughout the year, such as cold oden for summer and seasonal oden for winter.

This is an unusual oden, croquette. The crispy batter and the sweet meat with dashi has a novel texture.

They have a variety of menus such as fresh sashimi, nibbles, and fried food, and you can’t just stop eating with alcohol. The “extreme” French fries looks ordinary but is so good that you can’t help eating.

Menu

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They have carefully selected menu such as thickly cut bacon and cheese tofu, shutou (salted and fermented red snapper), ochazuke (rice with tea poured on it) and curry, which you would want to eat if you’re drinking alcohol.

6. Takoume 【Umeda/ Dotonbori】

Takoume was born in 1844 and has lasted for more than 170 years, which is the oldest in Japan. There are four locations in Osaka, and it is famous as it is often on TV and magazines. They keep simmering the ingredients in soup that they keep adding every day, which mixes the umami flavors of each to make a unique dashi, which has a little sweetness.

The “Tako (Octopus)” in Takoume comes from how the cooks serve customers as if each of them had eight hands. The menu said “Ume” comes from a former owner named Umesaburo.
Takoume has been loved by a lot of authors and intellectuals like Sakunosuke Oda, Shotaro Ikenami, Kazuo Dan, Seiko Tanabe, and Kenichi Yoshida.

Laying in tongues of baleen whales, and with their special food preparation, they keep their unique taste of their oden. And of course, sweetened boiled octopus. Octopus from Setouchi have been simmered with traditional dashi, and this is very popular.

“Koro,” which is the best part of sperm whales with oil extracted, is also loved by everyone. The jiggling tofu that has absorbed flavors is also superb.

The hot Japanese sake served in a tin pottery is just amazing, and makes you satisfied from your heart. “Saezuri,” which takes more than one week to cook, has no peculiar taste of whales and anyone can enjoy it. It is best with Sake.

Menu

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At Saezuri, sweetened boiled octopus, pouched whale tendon and green onion, chicken and green onion and mugwort bran are a must eat if you come to Takoume. They are reasonable, but dishes with whale meat are a bit expensive.

7.Osaka Oden Yakiton Kyu 【Umeda】

The restaurant is located on the seventh floor of the South Building of Grand Front. The restaurant was produced by Hiroyuki Koyama, who is a third owner of a Japanese cuisine restaurant in Tokushima “Aoyagi,” and the excellent oden (Red and white oden) with two kinds of dashi makes your body very warm.

You can enjoy foods like Obanzai (home cooking) from Awa in Tokushima, oden, and Yakiton (grilled pork).

This is white oden, which is a Kansai style oden with bonito and sea kelp based seafood dashi with oilcake adding umami taste to it. The cooks put time and effort into the dashi.

This is Red oden. The dashi is reddish because of the red pepper added to the white dashi. The Japanese radish soaks up the dashi and tastes very good.

You can enjoy Japanese cuisine from “roll cabbage (minced meat rolled in cabbage leaves)” to Japanese omelet to lotus root dumpling.

Menu

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Making a little side step to the cities next to Umeda

8. Jouyatou Toyosaki Honke 【Nakatsu】

The restaurant was opened in 1945, and one of the leading oden restaurant in Osaka. The heads of read snappers, Rausu sea kelp, and chicken broth added by white miso make a mild taste. The secret taste has been established by keeping adding dashi to the original one since the end of the war. It has rich flavor and umami, and makes your heart warm. Once you taste it, you will want to come back again. The restaurant has appeared in a famous manga “Oishimbo” and a famous Japanese actor/comedian Hisaya Morishige drew on the shop curtain.

The fish-paste products are all homemade, and they have seasonal vegetables and local specialties for their ingredients. Japanese radish and tofu are amazing. The fish-paste products have their own peculiar tastes so you can immediately recognize what is in them.

The pouch is filled with burdock, carrot, and shiitake mushroom and goes well with sweet dashi.

The Akashi Octopus is voluminous, but you must eat it before it gets stiff.

Menu

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You cannot order by ingredient, but they will serve you 14 ingredients little by little for the counter seats, and all in a hotpot for table seats. They will put them in a doggy bag so you can enjoy them at home as well.

9. Hanakujira 【Fukushima】

Hanakujira was famously chosen for Michelin Guide Kyoto/Osaka 2016. There is always a long line even in summer. It is often on TV, and there are many regular customers among celebrities.

The restaurant looks like this

Ayumi-ten is very close to the main location, so when the main one is full, you will be directed here.

The main location and Kita-ten are rather small and look like a food stall, but the taste is top-notch. The dashi is sea kelp and bonito based and thin, and they pour a lot of it, which makes you want to drink every time.

You can enjoy many ingredients without realizing because they are not heavy, and they are served right away. You will be surprised at how reasonable it is even after eating a lot.

At Hanakujira, Japanese radish, pouched green onion, UFO, edible chrysanthemum, and saezuri are must eats. The pouched green onion also has ginger in it, which is an excellent pair. UFO is a paste of fluffy whitefish and tofu, and the chrysanthemum is served with grated yam over it. Saezuri makes you feel like you are eating at a high class restaurant. If you want something heavy, you can eat “roll cabbage with cheese.” The dashi and the richness of cheese go well with each other.

Menu

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The ingredients without prices on the menu range from 100 yen to 300 yen.

The hanakujira, which is also the name of the restaurant, means the tale of a whale, called Obake. It is written as「尾羽毛」 (The first character means tale, the second one means feather, and the third one means hair). You can mix it with marinade miso and this goes perfectly with alcohol.

Extra chapter for other areas in Osaka.

10. Adachiya 【Mihoh】

This oden restaurant is located in Minoh and looks like one of those jazz bars. It is a reasonable, but classy, modern and Japanese style restaurant, and you can enjoy the friendly owner’s jokes and fun conversations with him. They have a variety of sake and soju, and eating tasty oden and having conversations while drinking will fill your mind and body.

They are simmered so they are full of flavors, and the dashi is transparent due to their very careful preparation. Of course the Japanese radishes and eggs are delicious, but I really recommend soft and big bamboo shoots.

The best Kyoto-style oden is simmered in carefully selected Ago-dashi (dried flying fish). The perfect dashi makes the peculiar taste of each ingredient stand out, which will ease your mind.

They also have seasonal menu that go really well with alcohol

Menu

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11. Oden Denpachi 【Esaka】

It is a good old-fashioned restaurant, located five minutes on foot from Esaka Station. It has been in the highly competitive area for 19 years, and it is open in summer.

This is the humongous hot pot in the center of the counter, in which oden is simmered.

There are 14 counter seats and 12 table seats, and the restaurant is so cozy that many people come here alone, and you often see regular customers having fun.

The one in front: Beef tendon：The chewy beef tendon has umami and tastes very good.
The one at the back: Pouched rice cake： The pouch that has absorbed dashi and the melting rice cake inside are the best combination.
Potato：The fresh baked texture has soaked in the dashi.

Enoki mushroom：The texture of enoki mushroom is amazing.
Japanese radish：The dashi is not too salty, and the radish is best paired with it.
Konjac noodle：The healthy noodles have absorbed the dashi.
Eggs：It has rich flavors and the yolk is not dry.
Chicken meat ball：Once you chew on it, the umami of the chicken will spread in your mouth.
Shiitake mushroom：The umami of shiitake mushroom tastes very sophisticated.

Cut octopus：The chewy texture is good for a change.

Konjac with eggs in it (sashimi)：There are a lot of eggs of willow leaf fish in it, and it has an interesting texture.

Menu

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You can order by piece by piece, so you can eat as much as you want. They also have various dishes such as Japanese omelet and yakisoba made with dashi. There are also a variety of alcohols.

Conclusion

There are oden ingredients you will find only in Osaka. The tendon is not common in Kanto even for other dishes, and they rarely put whale skin or whale tongue in oden.

You find「 関東煮 (Kanto-ni)」 on shop curtains and paper lanterns in Osaka.

This was originated from fried tofu with miso called Dengaku, and it changed to a cooking method to simmer food in soy sauce-based soup in Kanto, and it came back to Osaka in Meiji and Taisho era. Women in Kyoto called Dengaku oden, hence the name. After this a huge earthquake occurred in Kanto, and people from Kansai distributed Kansai-style oden to the affected people.

This Osaka-style oden became popular as a food that warms up our bodies and hearts, on which the common oden is originally based. This oden is just perfect for winter, isn’t it? So let’s go eat oden!

This article introduces great oden restaurants in Osaka, especially in Umeda, Higashi-Umeda, Nishi-Umeda, and Kitashinchi, as well as in Nakatsu, Fukushima, Esaka and Minoh. Different restaurants have different dashi and ingredients, so this article overviews Takoume, oden bar, Hanakujira that was on Michelin, to Jouyatou that was introduced in a famous manga called Oishimbo with recommended points for each.