28 November 2016
After enduring a rainy first day in Osaka, the weather was fortunately good for our visit to the Namba area of Osaka. We started the day by taking the subway from Nishi-Umeda subway station to the Namba subway station. Kuromon Ichiba Market (Kuromon translated means “black gate”), located in the Namba area of Osaka, was easily reached by a short walk from the Namba Subway Station.
This is one of the most well known central food markets and a top spot for fresh seafood, local produce and street food in Osaka! Therefore, this is a must-visit place in Osaka for foodies and it was best to go with an empty stomach and a wallet full of yen.
Compared to Kyoto’s Nishiki Market, Kuromon Ichiba Market has more stalls selling foodstuff that tourists can consume on site. When we arrived at about 9.30 AM, this place was already quite crowded. Most of the visitors, mostly tourists, were on the main street. The side streets were not so crowded.
The rest of this blog post describes what we saw and ate at this market.
One of the typical seafood store with loads of fresh seafood on sale for on site consumption or take-away. This stall sells the Kingcrab and giant salted grilled prawn.
“White” strawberries.
Some of the sweetest and most expensive rock melons are produced and sold in Japan.
Minami Fish Store - Shop selling the Japanese delicacy fugu, or pufferfish.
“One man’s meat, another man’s poison” – as the saying goes. The fugu is so poisonous that the smallest mistake in its preparation could be fatal. Only trained chef is allowed to prepare the dish.
Fugu in tanks.
After a walk along the entire street which was about 600 meter long, we made a mental note of what we were going to eat and got down to it. Definitely no fugu!
Live sea urchin - the stall-owner will open, clean and serve the edible creamy orange insides of the sea urchin to customers.
A must try in this market would be the fresh seafood. Our first course was sashimi.
Assorted sashimi for 2500 yen.
The best and most tasty was these slices of well-marbled fatty tuna.
The seafood were all pre-packed and displayed. Just select what you fancy, pay for it at the cashier and go find a place to enjoy the food. The seafood stores has tables and chairs set up within their premises where we could sit and consume our food. Soy sauce, wasabi, chopsticks were provided.
Next course after the sashimi was a king-size salt-coated grilled prawn.
Giant salt-coated grilled prawn.
There was a stall selling freshly grilled scallops. The aroma from the grilled scallop was so enticing. For 1000 yen, the stall-holder will clean a large scallop, load it with butter and soy sauce and grilled it over a charcoal fire.
We came across a stall called the Kurogin Tuna Store with a man carving up a large tuna. After acquiring a taste for the fatty tuna during this trip, we could not resist the sliced tuna sashimi that was sold at this store. The sliced tuna were packed in boxes and there were many options to choose from: Otoro, Chutoro, Akami, Assorted, Sashimi or Sushi.
We bought some otoro (fatty tuna sashimi) from this stall, to be consumed immediately by the side of the stall. The "Otoro" is the most valuable and expensive cut from the underbelly of the tuna and is also the fattest. The pink colour came from the high levels of omega-3 fats that are found in the flesh and is a prized delicacy for the melt-in-the-mouth taste.
Pink fatty tuna slices (Otoro) for 3000 yen.
After indulging in the fatty tuna, we patronise a store selling the wagyu beef on skewers. Beef from many regions of Japan were sold here, e.g. Saga, Kobe, Matsusaka. One of the most expensive beef is the Matsusaka beef where some may claim is better tasting than the more famous Kobe beef.
We could not resist the temptation to have a stick of Matsusaka Beef skewer.
While the beef was delicious, the portion was small. On hindsight, we felt that it was not worth paying 2500 yen for this skewer of Matsusaka Beef. It would be better to save that money and go splurge on a proper Matzusaka Beef Yakiniku dinner at some other time.
We back to the stall selling the giant grilled prawn and bought a box of huge boiled King-crab claws and legs for 5800 Yen. We loved eating crabs and this is one of the highlights of our visit. This was our last seafood item at this market.
Coffee lovers should check out this store selling coffee from all over the world.
One of the best thing to drink at the Kuromon Ichiba Market. Freshly ground and brewed coffee from this stall.
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