Osaka's motto is kuidaore, eat until you fall down, and the city means it as an instruction rather than a warning. This one runs north to south: a whisky counter that will not put ice in your glass, two arcades of frying oil that between them explain the whole district, a lane that has burned to the ground twice and been rebuilt at its own stubborn width, and an oden house warming sake in tin flasks since 1844.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Dojima Samboa
The Samboa line starts in Kobe in 1918, but this house is 1934 and it opened on Nakanoshima, not here. It was burnt off that address in the war and restarted in a barrack on the ground in 1947; the room you walk into is 1955, by the architect Kawashima Chūji, and the city put it on its living architecture selection in 2014. The third generation stands behind it. The house highball takes no ice at all: the whisky and the Wilkinson soda are both kept cold instead, the soda goes in on one throw so the fizz does the stirring, and a twist of lemon finishes it. The name comes from a poetry magazine, or from Tanizaki, or from a signmaker who miscut a Z. Their own publisher hedges, so we will too.
the line from 1918, this house 1934, this room 1955 · 5pm till 11.30pm, Sat from 4pm, shut Sundays and public holidays, so shut Tue 11 Aug 2026 · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Kushikatsu Yaekatsu
The arcade was cut through in 1921 to join Shinsekai to Tobita, and this counter has had a queue outside it since about 1947, though no two sources will give you the same year and their own answer is seventy something. Standing room, a communal tub of sauce, and a leaf of cabbage to scoop with because dipping a second time is not done. The large draught and the dote yaki, beef tendon gone soft in white miso, are what the queue is standing for. One thing worth knowing: they took out a brand new licence in 2025 on the small room across the arcade, valid until 2031, and shut it on 20 June 2026. A live permit proves paperwork and not a door.
the arcade cut through in 1921, this counter since about 1947 · 10.30am till 8.30pm, shut Thursdays, so dark 6, 13, 20 and 27 Aug 2026 · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Kushikatsu Daruma, Shinsekai
Momono Yoshie opened this in 1929 on the ground the Luna Park had stood on, under another name, feeding labourers. It burnt in the first air raid on Osaka in 1945 and her son rebuilt it. The third generation meant to close in 2001 until the actor Akai Hidekazu, a customer since he was a boy, found someone to take the curtain on, so the family that owns it now is not the founder's. The no double dipping rule everyone quotes at you was retired in 2020 when the communal tub went, and the governor of Osaka said in public he was sad about it. You can now buy a bottle of the sauce with the abolished rule printed on the label. Take the original beef skewer first and the dote yaki after. There is a one drink minimum posted in four languages, which tells you precisely who is standing at this counter.
founded 1929, burnt out 1945, under this family since 2001 · 11am till 10.30pm, weekends and holidays from 10.30am, open every day of the year · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Yōshu no Mise Michi
Hozenji Yokocho is not old in the way it looks. The temple is 1637 and the mossed Fudō survived the firebombing of March 1945 when everything around it did not. Then a gas explosion during a demolition next door took out nineteen shops in September 2002, and a fire finished the job the following April. The building code should have widened the lane from two point seven metres to four. It stayed narrow because the man whose fire caused the second disaster sold his land rights so that four shops could widen their own frontages instead, and three hundred thousand people signed to keep it. Even the paving is only 1982, granite setts the Nankai railway handed over from a tram bed. Michi has been down here since 1957, twelve seats, and it is the room where Katsura Shijaku asked Katsura Beichō to take him on as a pupil. Whisky from about fifteen hundred yen, the house raisin butter, and a cover charge of roughly a thousand before you order anything.
the temple 1637, this bar 1957, the lane itself rebuilt by 2004 · 5pm till midnight, shut Sundays and public holidays; the alley's own festival is 10 and 11 Aug 2026 and Michi is shut on the 11th, so go on the 10th · verified Aug 2026
- 5 · The Last Call
Takoume Honten
Okada Umejiro opened this in 1844 on Dotonbori, selling octopus simmered in his own sauce and kantodaki, which is what Osaka calls oden. The fifth generation of his family runs it now and signs himself the odd job man. It is a jokan-ya, a sake warming house: the sake goes into a tin flask, into hot water, and comes to you at forty five degrees in a double walled tin cup a local tinsmith made so it would not go cold. Whale tongue in the oden. Oda Sakunosuke wrote it into a novel in 1940.
est. 1844 · 16:00 till 22:30 · verified Aug 2026
🎁 The room this road used to end in, and where it went. The Misono Building went up in 1955 as a cabaret with a dance hall, banquet rooms and a sauna, and after 2004 the landlord cut the rents to whatever a young operator could pay, which is how the second floor became a warren of small bars behind unmarked doors. It closed for good on 5 July 2025 and the site is coming down for a hotel that opens in 2031 at the earliest. The bars did not go with it. Three of them reopened in the Nippo Kawaramachi Kaikan, a four storey block from 1966 about forty metres round the corner: High Jinks, New Concorde, and Namba Benitsuru, which played its last Misono night on 31 December 2024 and reopened on the fourth floor in March 2025. Takoume shuts at half ten. This is where you go after.