I visited my friend's work place - Torikizune (I believe it translates to 'chicken lord') in downtown Osaka. It is my first time to an izakaya. An izakaya is like a mix between a bar and a restaurant (maybe like a tapas-like bar?), only selling very small dishes to nibble on while perhaps for you, the main focus is to carry on drinking and chatting. The food here is very decent for its price - all dishes were 280 yen!
Free refills of cabbage after purchasing a bowl! Really refreshing and tasty with its vinegrette dressing (sort of like the Pietro dressing that you can buy here in Japanese supermarkets).
Sweet potato salad with mustard dressing. While the sweet potato is just so good, you can get pretty full with this dish.
Takowasa = Octopus (tako) with wasabi (wasa). Think I'm starting to like wasabi ;)
Cheese mochi korokke. The best at this izakaya and recommended by my friend. The whole thing is soo oomphh - the mochi hugging a cube of melty cheese at the centre, deep-fried to perfection, served with a small slice of butter on top! Trust me, this was seriously the fattiest, oophiest goodness that I've had in a long time!
Grilled rice and potato (paste-like), drizzled with some kewpie mayonnaise, and topped with nori (seaweed) shreds.
Chicken rice. Also a highly recommended dish of this izakaya. This is rice steamed in chicken stock along with carrots, gobo (burdock root) and chicken! It comes to your table still needing a 3 minute steam, so it's all flavoursome and steaming hot by the time you lift up the lid. I levered some acceptance to eat food cooked with meat (thought not eating the meat) when I arrived in Japan as what are the chances I'm gonna eat this once I return to Australia. (By the way, I'm pesco-vego). Pleasantly nice and simple dish, with a good fragrance of chicken. Oh, how guilty I felt.
We ordered some drinks called サワー('sour'), which are Walker based mixed drinks. I had a glass of honey 'sour', while my friend had a grape 'sour'. Very refreshing without any slight taste of alcohol! However, it was a little sweet, but that's because I don't enjoy soft drinks and sugary fakeness as much as normal Aussies.
Well, if you are in Osaka, Japan and stuck on where to chill, eat or drink, you can find this izakaya next to the Baskin Robbins located on that bigggg road (across the road from Baskin Robbins is a massive 'PARTYLAND' sign). Once you find that lift next to Baskin Robbins, just hop on and head to 9th floor. Of course, located on other floors are many other izakayas just like this one, if I were you I wouldn't particularly head to Torikizune, but man you have try the Cheese mochi korokke, I'm tellin' ya!
dude you sound like a professional food blog o.o;
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