“Takoume”, the oldest Oden restaurant in Japan, which has been in business for 180 years.

We visited “Takoume”, the longest-running Oden restaurant in Japan, established in 1844.

What is “Oden” ?

Daikon, fishcakes, eggs and many other ingredients are boiled in a soy sauce-based dashi broth.→See wiki

But Oden restaurants are open all year round.

About “Takoume”, the oldest Oden restaurant in Japan

Takoume has been written about many times in Japanese literature novels by various authors.→Takoume web site in Japanese

Takoume has two restaurants in Osaka.

Takoume has been loved by numerous writers, including Sakunosuke Oda, Shotaro Ikenami, Kazuo Dan, Seiko Tanabe, and Kenichi Yoshida. Takoume appears in their works.

Among them, Ken Kaiko has been a customer since his grandfather’s generation, and wrote about Takoume in his novel “A New Celestial Body” for 10 pages. His daughter, Michiko, is also a customer, and Takoume also appears in her works.

Cited and translated from Takoume web site

We visited Takoume in late autumn.

We would like to try Oden restaurant since 1844.

Enjoy oden !

To start, we enjoyed well-cold Japanese beer.

Next, we indulged in Takoume’s super classic “TakoKanroni”.

TakoKanroni, sweetened and plum tasted octopus

This might seem unusual for foreign tourists.

But we enjoyed them！

Oden has many ingredients

We tried the many ingredients of Oden.

In the end, we enjoyed authentic and traditional Oden.

A little happening !

The restaurant can seat about 15 people, and the chef cooked in the center of restaurant where customers can watch him to cook.

That is a traditional style for Takoume.

The chef looked like a stubborn man.

The customers were incessantly ordering more Oden to the chef´s assistant.

The chef just took raw Oden into the hot pot from the refrigerator and heated up them.

So, the chef didn’t take orders from the customers because of busy for cooking.

The chef served the hot Oden to the customers without making eye contact with anyone because of busy.

It was such a busy restaurant.

But drunk office worker ordered oden to the chef.

The chef would not accept his orders.

Other customers, incuding us, ordered to his assistants.

The assistants accepted our order easily.

The drunk office worker seemed not to understand the restaurant´s ordering rules.

After a while…..

He ordered to the chef again.

He got angry.

Immediately, an assitantwent took his order.

Then the happening ended.

You can calmly talk about deep stories in your life with your friends in each other.

So it’s an attractive and traditonal restaurant.

What we would like to order in next time.

We didn’t notice at the restaurant, but there are still a lot of delicious-looking Oden.

We would also like to try the plum wine made by the chef.

Thank you for your Oden!

We were satisfied because of full and a little bit drunk.

When I finished the payment to the assistant, I just said to the chef who will not make eye contact…

The chef made us eye contact for a while with a little smile.

We went in the another day

We went to the restaurant on another day to meet the chef and Oden…

However, the chef was absent and another chef served us.