Tebasaki – Famous Nagoya Meibutsu

ByFirst Admin

Aichi Prefecture, Food, Nagoya City

Aug 05, 2014

Tebasaki – Famous Nagoya Meibutsu

Famous foods for any given area in Japan are called meibutsu. Osaka meibutsu is okonomiyaki (as is Hiroshima’s meibutsu, but they have their own famous style of the same dish), and in the mountains of Nagano it is Shinshu Soba.

My favourite meibutsu of all is one of the meibutsu of Nagoya – Tebasaki, or fried chicken wings. They are wonderfully tasty and an fantastic companion to a beer (preferably a Dai-jokki…) The great tebasaki restaurants in Nagoya will greet you with a hearty “Nan-nin-mae desu ka?” (“How many servings do you want?”) because they already know you are there for the chicken wings!

There are two really famous tebasaki chains that serve Nagoya. The older of the two is Furaibo, which spices its chicken wings in the traditional Nagoya way (see below). However, if you like a bit of spice in your life, there is a much more peppery version available at Sekai no Yama-chan, which has so many branches of its shop in the Kanayama area, that if one of their shops is full the waitress can literally walk you to another just around the corner.

There is a special way of eating tebasaki reminiscent of how a king at a banquet table might devour his fowl. You can see the process illustrated here on a blog that I found. Basically you want to break the wing in half, allowing you to scrape all the meat off one side with one strong swipe of your teeth!

You can find one of the many, many branches of Furaibo or Sekai no Yama-chan on their Japanese websites that will get you pointed in the right direction to tebasaki heaven! Furaibo has shops literally everywhere in central Nagoya as well as the suburbs, while Sekai no Yama-chan has many in the Nagoya area, but they also have stores in Tokyo, Sapporo and Kumamoto! Therefore, it’s odds on that there will be a Furaibo somewhere nearby should you be in one of these locations and feel the urge for a feast of spicy, crunchy chicken and loads of beer. ( A foreigner’s delight!)

Just look for the signs in the above links and you’ll be able to spot the one nearby!