With the national travel discount now in effect, tourist spots across the country are overflowing with people. On Saturday and Sunday, Kyoto was so crowded with popular spots such as Shijo that it felt difficult to walk. Such is the case for many people traveling to the Kinki area. What do you eat when you travel to such a Kinki area? This is the question. As you know, the Kinki area is overflowing with delicious food.
Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe are actually close enough that you can travel there in an hour by train. Each of the Kinki region has developed its own unique food culture. Kyoto has kaiseki cuisine and yudofu (tofu), Osaka has kushikatsu and okonomiyaki, the maniacs have Osaka curry such as spiced curry and marbo tofu curry, and Kobe has soba-meshi and seafood dishes such as Akashi sea bream and octopus, to name just a few.
When traveling in the Kinki region, there are so many things to eat that one is at a loss as to what to eat. For such people, I highly recommend beef dishes such as yakiniku (grilled meat). The Kinki region is dotted with production areas of Japanese beef such as Kobe beef, Matsuzaka beef, Tajima beef, Omi beef, Kyoto beef, etc., and you can have higher quality, more reasonable, and tastier meat anywhere than you can in Tokyo. Some people may have an image of Tsuruhashi, Osaka, when it comes to yakiniku, but that is not all. There are also delicious yakiniku restaurants in Kobe and Kyoto. For example, in Kyoto, there is a yakiniku restaurant called Yakiniku no Tendan, which serves yakiniku in a broth, and in Kobe, there are yakiniku restaurants and steak houses that specialize in Kobe beef. Also, “niku-jaga” is sometimes served in Kyoto’s obanzai, but the meat used for “niku-jaga” is also beef in the Kinki region, making it more, well, rich and flavorful.
The main reason for the development of beef eating in the Kinki region can be traced back to the Omi clan in Shiga Prefecture during the Edo period.
In the Edo period, beef was consumed for medicinal purposes, and in 1687, Den’emon Hanaki devised a recipe for beef marinated in miso based on the Chinese Ming Dynasty book “Honzo Tsuname,” and the Omi clan was one of the first clans in Japan to produce edible beef. As a result, they excelled in their ability to fatten beef. In the midst of all this, Westerners such as Perry visited Japan at the end of the Edo period (1603-1867), forcing the country to open up and bringing a meat-eating culture with them, which led to the further spread of beef.
If any of our viewers travel to the Kinki region, please take the opportunity to indulge in a meal of delicious wagyu beef.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)