Guides
Ten things from Aichi that survive a suitcase, ranked by how much they actually taste of this place rather than of a gift shop.
Everything here keeps for weeks unopened, fits in hand luggage, and is sold both at the source and in the food halls beneath Nagoya Station. Where an item is worth buying at a particular place, that place is named. The online links are for after you get home, or for anything you decide you should have bought.
Black soybean miso, fermented two years in cedar barrels under a cone of river stones. Salty, barely sweet, and the ingredient every other savoury thing in this region is built on.
Thick undercooked udon with a sachet of the red-miso broth. One of the few boxed versions of a Japanese dish that lands close to the restaurant.
Sweetened bean-miso sauce in a bottle. Pour it over anything fried and you have the Nagoya version of it.
The pepper-and-sesame seasoning from the chicken-wing houses, in a shaker. The wings do not travel; this does.
Aichi grows more matcha than anywhere in Japan. Ceremonial grade from a Nishio maker costs a fraction of the Uji equivalent, and culinary grade is cheap enough to bake with.
Pressed whole prawns baked into thin crackers, from the fishing towns of the Chita peninsula. The regional default gift, and better than that sounds.
Steamed rice-flour sweet, dense and slightly chewy, mildly sweet. Nagoya's oldest confection and an acquired texture for most visitors.
Flat wide wheat noodles, the local udon. Dried, they cook in four minutes and keep for a year.
Sweet red bean paste, thick enough to spread. Put it on buttered toast and you have the region's breakfast at home.
Bean-paste biscuit sandwiches that have been made in Aichi since 1966. Not elegant. Extremely hard to stop eating.
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