Izakaya Toyo

If Osaka’s standing-bar scene has an internationally recognised face, it’s the blowtorch-wielding one of Toyo-san. Featured on Netflix’s Street Food, Izakaya Toyo has weathered a decade of fame without losing what made it famous in the first place.

The format is refreshingly casual and a welcome break from the busy criss-crossing of shops and streets that is Kyobashi. Mostly outdoors, you’re first greeted with the smell of barbecuing fish, tables on the pavement, and a tub of ice out front from where you fetch your own drinks and leave the empty for the tab at the end. Toyo-san himself retired recently, but his successors have changed nothing.

The main draw is the exceptional seafood, with sashimi-grade maguro, uni, ikura and hand-rolled sushi rolls – plus the headline act of the braised tuna cheek, which is turned bare-handed on a charcoal grill by a blowtorch-wielding chef. 

The catch is the hours: Toyo is closed on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays and public holidays, with last orders at 6.30pm and a queue that reliably forms before the 1pm opening. That’s partly why Tachinomi Shomin around the corner, open from 11am, is Toyo’s natural follow-on for anyone turning up on the wrong day or wanting to keep going past 7pm.