Eating in Chiba
Try these dishes while you are here.
Try these dishes while you are here.
Order the first one and work down the list.
We recommend ordering this one first.
Horse mackerel chopped on the board with miso and herbs until it is a paste, eaten raw or grilled on a shell.
Most of Japan’s peanuts grow here. Boiled fresh in season, or roasted and salted.
The street up to Naritasan temple is lined with eel restaurants, ten minutes from the airport.
Ramen in a red chilli-oil soup with minced pork and onion. Fishermen’s food, and genuinely hot.
Small shops, no English sign outside, and worth the walk.
A bowl of ramen under a layer of red chilli oil, with raw onion and minced pork. It is properly hot. The shop stops for the day when the soup runs out.
Namero is raw fish chopped on the board with miso and spring onion until it holds together. Fishermen made it on the boat. Chikura, on the south Boso coast.
On the sloping street between Narita station and the temple. The eel is cut and skewered in the front window, then grilled over charcoal at the back.
The Choshi railway sells more rice crackers than train tickets, and says so openly. The crackers are dipped in soy while still hot, so they come out soft instead of crisp.
Chiba grows about three quarters of Japan's peanuts, and Yachimata is the centre of it. After harvest the plants are stacked in cones called botchi and left to dry in the field.
These are not the flat gyoza served elsewhere. They are wrapped in thick dough, stood upright in a pan and cooked in oil until the outside is hard and blistered.
Nokogiriyama drops almost straight into the sea, and Hota fishing port sits at the foot of it. The co-op that lands the fish runs this canteen, and eats in it.
Namero is raw fish chopped with miso and spice until it turns sticky. Fishermen made it on the boat, where soy sauce would have spilled.
The flats off Kisarazu give up clams. This place builds a set around them — rice cooked with clams, and a clam soup beside it.
A clam from Tokyo Bay, thick and meaty, giving a strong stock. This is the fishermen’s own shop, inside the port.