Deep dives: Osaka

Heirloom vegetables are an inconspicuous but fundamental part of Osaka cuisine. At Hirano Farm, an urban farm surrounded by project housing in suburban Suita, traditional greens like Suita kuwai arrowhead and Kema cucumber live on to convey the city’s agricultural legacy to new generations.

More and more Osaka chefs these days choose local when planning drinks pairings for their menus. Forward-looking restaurants may carry Osaka-made wine from the likes of Katashimo, a 111-year-old winery preserving the legacy of a historic grape-growing region.

In Japanese cuisine, spices are traditionally used to bring out, rather than alter, the flavours of the other ingredients. That subtle approach to seasoning informs everything at Yamatsu Tsujita in Sakai, a specialist in domestic spices founded in 1902 and now run by fourth-generation owner and spice evangelist Hiroyuki Tsujita.

Whether he’s upholding the century-old history of Sakai’s indigenous hawk-claw chilli species or stone-grinding wild sansho peppers for his spice blends, Tsujita works tirelessly to protect and promote the more piquant components of Osaka’s cuisine.

Osaka is a city that knows its way around a blade. Over the past 600 years, some of Japan’s finest silverware – from samurai swords to the knives used by Michelin-starred chefs – has been forged by the blacksmiths of Sakai, the traditional knife district south of central Osaka.

Chef Yusuke Takada of the two-Michelin-starred La Cime, for instance, sources his blades exclusively from Baba Cutlery Works, a purveyor of kitchen knives with intricate lacquered handles. Combining unbeatable durability with beauty, these premium specimens are a cut above.