Unagi 鰻
Freshwater eel, usually grilled and basted with a sweet soy-based tare as kabayaki and served over rice.
About Unagi
- What it is: Kabayaki is eel grilled with tare sauce; served on rice it becomes unadon. Shirayaki is eel grilled with salt only.
- Styles: Kanto style opens the eel along the back, grills it, steams it, then grills it again with sauce, so it is soft and tender. Kansai style opens it along the belly and grills it without steaming, so it is crisper.
- Where to try it: Hamamatsu in Shizuoka, around Lake Hamana, is a long-standing centre of eel farming with many eel restaurants, and sits between east and west so both styles are found there. Nagoya has hitsumabushi, chopped eel on rice eaten in stages, ending with dashi poured over.
- Season: Eaten all year, but above all on doyo no ushi no hi, the midsummer Day of the Ox, as stamina food against the summer heat. The custom dates from the Edo period.
Season
- J
- F
- M
- A
- M
- J
- J
- A
- S
- O
- N
- D
Checked against: Japan Hamanako Unagi (eel) | iN HAMAMATSU.COM · Savor Unagi Eels on the Midsummer Day of the Ox! | SAVOR JAPAN · Unagi | Wikipedia.
Unagi on Shibuya246
No photos of this one on the blog yet. The notes above come from official and food-guide sources and are checked every quarter. Our own photos will appear here once we've written about it.