Izakaya Nagahori Osaka – dinner at the one Michelin Star restaurant

Izakaya Nagahori 居酒屋ながほり is a one-star Michelin restaurant located in a small house in a residential area of Osaka. It seemed to have many positive reviews on Tripadvisor and elsewhere. We have always associated izakaya dining with good and casual places to eat in Japan. For Izakaya Nagahori to achieve its one star recognition must be quite an achievement, and so we put it on our list of restaurants to try in Osaka.

Izakaya Nagahori Osaka is a long and narrow restaurant on the ground floor of this house. It is probably the most refined izakaya we have ever seen. Customers sit at the long counter facing the chefs clothed in traditional white outfits. The servers worked behind us, clothed in modern black. A mix of traditional and modernity.

Izakaya Nagahori Menu

The Izakaya Nagahori menu was only in Japanese which we can’t read a word of. The lead chef spoke some English. He asked if we would leave it to him to serve his recommendations to us. We agreed even though no price or description was discussed, only whether we had food allergies to which we replied in the negative. A truly ‘omakase’ experience!

Dinner at Izakaya Nagahori started with a potato salad. It was quite an ordinary potato salad, not exactly what we expected at such a famous restaurant.

From here onwards, I cannot remember the exact sequence of the dishes or the descriptions of some of them. The sashimi course was served soon after. The pieces of raw fish were small and thin. Taste wise they were not exceptional.

The highlight of the dinner was the dish of crab with jelly. The jelly had a mild vinegar flavour and made this similar to eating hairy crab with vinegar. Except that in this case, all the meat had been extracted and rolled into a ball and presented on a crab shell. This was an exceptionally delicious dish and may be reason enough to visit Nagahori. We were not given a breakdown of our final bill but I suspect this dish may have made up a big portion of the cost of our meal.

We thought that the soup and the first fish dish were also quite average in taste.

The second fish dish – I think it is grilled barracuda was better.

A deep-fried dish and the fresh fruit salad were two of the last few courses.

The last course was hamburger steak (made with minced beef) topped with a raw egg. Even though this is a humble dish it tasted very good – the quality and flavours of the beef and egg shone through.

Overall, dinner at Izakaya Nagahori Osaka was quite an experience as we did not know what to expect. Perhaps we should pick up some Japanese for future visits. The total cost of our meal including two beers and two glasses of sake was around Yen 26,000 for two persons. We thought that the crab and hamburger steak dishes were very enjoyable and the other dishes, less so.

Ratings:
Food: 3
Service: 3
Value: 3
Atmosphere: 4
Overall Rating: 3 TOPs

Address: 1-3-9, Uemachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka, 540-0005
〒540-0005 大阪府大阪市中央区上町1-3-9

More information on Nagahori Osaka can be found at the Tripadvisor page.