Mimiu is a long-established Osaka restaurant known for udon-suki, a hot pot dish featuring udon noodles and an abundant selection of ingredients from both the mountains and the sea.
The restaurant traces its origins to the Edo period. In Sakai, Osaka, the long-established restaurant Mimiuro had been in business for approximately 200 years when the previous-generation owner, Heitaro, renamed it Mimiu in 1924 and transformed it into a restaurant specializing in noodles.
The restaurant’s distinctive flavor begins with its dashi. Every day, bonito flakes are simmered for about two hours to prepare the broth. Careful attention is also paid to the origins and quality of the ingredients. This uncompromising approach has helped preserve the restaurant’s traditional taste over generations.
The restaurant’s signature dish is udon-suki, a traditional Osaka hot pot generously filled with carefully selected ingredients from both the mountains and the sea.
The dish is known for its delicate dashi, which reflects the skills of craftsmen who have passed down their techniques over many years. The rich combination of ingredients and carefully prepared broth creates the distinctive flavor associated with Mimiu’s udon-suki.
Udon-suki is a traditional Osaka hot pot dish made by adding udon noodles to uozuki, a style of sukiyaki originally prepared with sea fish.
Unlike modern beef sukiyaki, udon-suki is prepared by simmering udon and a variety of ingredients together in a relatively light dashi-based broth. It is a type of yose-nabe, or mixed-ingredient hot pot, and has long been popular in the Kansai region.
Udon-suki is said to have been created in 1928 by Heitaro Satsuma, the first-generation owner of Mimiu in Osaka. He added udon noodles to the remaining ingredients from a fish-based sukiyaki dish and simmered them together.
He noticed that the dashi soaked into the noodles and produced a delicious flavor. He then developed a new hot pot using approximately 15 to 16 different ingredients, including foods from both the mountains and the sea, cooked together in an iron pot.
The dish evolved from an idea of enjoying soba in a shabu-shabu-style manner and was completed around 1933. Mimiu originally operated as a Tokyo-style soba restaurant and continued serving soba sukiyaki until before World War II.
Udon-suki is prepared by adding plenty of udon broth to a shallow hot pot and simmering the noodles together with a wide variety of seasonal ingredients.
Typical ingredients include chicken, shrimp, grilled conger eel, clams, Chinese cabbage, hirousu tofu cakes, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, mitsuba, yuba, nama-fu wheat gluten, kamaboko fish cake, and taro.
The udon and ingredients that take longer to cook are often parboiled beforehand. This allows everything to be gently reheated in the pot and makes the dish easier to enjoy.
Common condiments include green onions, ginger, and momiji-oroshi, a grated daikon radish condiment flavored with chili pepper. These add freshness, fragrance, and a gentle spiciness to the delicate broth.
Restaurants typically serve udon-suki in a shallow pot made from aluminum, stainless steel, or copper. At home, a traditional Japanese earthenware donabe can also be used.
Udon-suki brings together noodles, seafood, meat, vegetables, and seasonal ingredients in one carefully prepared hot pot. Its light dashi and generous selection of ingredients reflect the culinary traditions of Osaka and the Kansai region.
For visitors interested in Osaka’s traditional cuisine, udon-suki offers a distinctive way to experience the region’s long-standing culture of dashi, noodles, and seasonal foods.