JapanNewbie

Tebasaki – Nagoya

Posted on 04. Nov, 2004 @ 8:38 pm by harvey in Culture

Among other things Nagoya is famous for its Tebasaki (手羽先). Tebasaki is a chicken wing. While tebasaki can be found in any Izakaya (居酒屋）in Japan really… in Nagoya it is especially loaded with pepper and spicy.

There is a store in Nagoya that is especially famous for Tebasaki called Furaibou (風来坊) in Sakae (栄）. Here is a map.

At Furaibo, before you even have a chance to look at the menu the waitress will ask you two things. One, is the usual “What do you want to drink?” The second is, “How many servings do you want to start with?” 「何人前ですか？」 One serving of tebasaki is five chicken wings for 420 yen. I went with one other person and we could easily eat four servings, plus three other side dishes. Often times customers of Furaibou will only order a giant plate of chicken, and a beer to wash it down. Hearty…

Furaibo has one other dish that is interesting to try… Just to say you did it. There is a food called dojyou karage （どじょうの唐揚げ）. It is a karage style fried fish… But this fish, dojyou, is apparently not eaten any other way… If at any other place. It is apparently the type of dirty fish that you can find swimming around in the bottom of a rice field or something.

There is a special way to eat tebasaki that Nagoya people have perfected. This will help you clean the bones without leaving any extra meat behind. Here is a simplified explanation.

Step 1: Hold Chicken.

Step 2: Break off top part.

Step 3: ???!
This is a mystery step, but there are two ways. One, you can stick the entire chicken into your mouth with holding onto the unbroken end and pull. Another method is to bend up the larger of the two bones, cleanly separating it from the chicken. Then, you can suck the meat off the smaller bone with ease.

Step 4: Clean bones!

There is another good place in Nagoya for tebasaki called Sekai no Yama-chan. I hear they have a shop in Tokyo which sells Nagoya style tebasaki as well.

For those in Osaka, there is a place called 「宝の蔵」”Takara no Kura” which apparently has Nagoya style tebasaki as well!

-Harvey