Japan Tourism / Kanazawa Oden Packed With Locally Sourced Ingredients; Residents, Tourists Alike Enjoy Broth-Absorbing Snow Crab

By Yuki Deguchi / Special to Ryoko Yomiuri Publication

13:54 JST, October 28, 2025

KANAZAWA — When autumn rolls around, people start to long for food that warms both body and soul. One of the most popular choices is oden stew, and one of the top places to eat it is Kanazawa, the city that is said to have the most oden restaurants per capita in Japan.

I visited three oden restaurants in the Korinbo and Katamachi districts near the Kanazawa municipal government building. Both of these areas are home to many good oden eateries.

One of the distinctive characteristics of Kanazawa oden is its broth. It’s made from such ingredients as kelp, dried bonito flakes and dried sardines, and also incorporates locally produced soy sauce such as Ono soy sauce.

The broth is light in color and taste, but the flavors from various ingredients seeps into the broth. It has a rich, slightly sweet flavor and is called the “dashi broth that you can drink up.”

Miyuki Honten, an oden izakaya restaurant located off National Route 157, pays particular attention to its broth. The restaurant’s egg soup uses the oden broth without diluting it, and I was able to drink it all up like a soup.

A typical element in Kanazawa oden is kani-men, which literally means “crab face” and is a winter delicacy in the city. The shell of a female snow crab called the Kobako crab is stuffed with crab meat, sotoko roe and uchiko immature roe.

“The ingredients are stuffed into the shell by hand and nothing is added to hold them together,” said Mieko Miyazaki, manager of Oden Kikuichi, which was the first restaurant to make kani-men.

Kani-men is very popular among both local residents and tourists because it lets them enjoy the luxurious delicacy of an entire crab soaked in the dashi broth. Pouring hot sake into the shell after eating the ingredients is another way to enjoy it.

A wide variety of other oden components also use locally produced ingredients, such as Japanese ivory shells, donut-shaped kuruma-fu wheat gluten and ganmodoki fried tofu fritters that are called “hirozu” in the Kanazawa dialect.

Oden with Kaga vegetables produced in Kanazawa is also available, such as Gensuke daikon radish and Kanazawa garland chrysanthemums, both of which are in season from autumn to winter.

Another unusual and popular element is akadama (literally “red ball”), a quail egg wrapped in a paste colored with red bell peppers that is offered at the Akadama Honten restaurant.

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