Oita Soul Food · Battered Fried Chicken
Toriten
Photo: Toritencat / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Oita is also a karaage heartland, with the city of Nakatsu promoting itself as Japan's karaage capital, so one prefecture is home to two rival styles of fried chicken.
Boneless chicken pieces are marinated in soy sauce, sake and garlic, dipped in a thin tempura batter and deep-fried, then served with a ponzu dipping sauce spiked with hot mustard rather than the usual squeeze of lemon.
Why it's made this way: The dish is widely credited to Toyoken, a Beppu restaurant founded in 1926, whose kitchen developed a boneless, tempura-battered fried chicken, and it stuck hard enough that Oita locals now call it their prefecture's soul food.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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