With Osaka flavours – takoyaki, gyoza and okonomiyaki – and fun decor, Japanese restaurant chain tempts Shanghai diners
- Restaurant chain specialising in Japanese-Chinese food, Osaka Ohsho returns to China to satisfy the cravings of Chinese shut out of Japan by Covid-19 entry ban
- Its dumplings, fritters and octopus balls, and its restaurants’ fun decor, have been a draw in Shanghai, where it plans to open several more outlets
Popular food chain Osaka Ohsho, which specialises in Japanese-Chinese food and is known in Japan mainly for its jumbo gyoza dumplings, aims to take advantage of a surge in demand for Japanese cuisine in China by opening a string of outlets this year in Shanghai.
Osaka Fun Dining Osaka Ohsho features new menus offering speciality dishes not found at its restaurants in Japan, including okonomiyaki fritters and kushi-katsu skewered pork cutlets.
Unable to travel to Japan as tourists because of the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese people keen for a taste of the country must settle for restaurants at home. The result is a surge in demand.
According to trade statistics, there was a 41.6 per cent jump in Japanese food exports to China in 2021 compared with the previous year.
With the cabbage inside the gyoza, it was sweet with a nice crunch. It tasted great
Tomonari Takada, 51, president and representative director of a joint venture that operates the two Osaka Ohsho outlets currently in Shanghai, says: “Our plan is to open five more shops around the centre of Shanghai this year.”