Honke Shibato

Visited August 2025. This was my favorite meal to eat in all of Japan!! Unagi, it's Japanese Grilled Eel with Tare Sauce & Rice with Miso Soup & Pickled Vegetables. They gave Cold Green Tea as a drink as well. This meal was out of this world, such delicious food!! Ordered the Unaju Mamushi Box, it comes in 3 sizes. Small, Medium & Large. The Medium was just enough to fill me up. Loaded with lots of eel, rice & generous amounts of the Tare Sauce, it's a must-try dish worth having in Japan. The service was impeccable, & the lady who appeared to be the manager/owner even took our pictures in the front of the restaurant as well! We had Unagi in Tokyo as well, but this Unagi in Osaka was by far the best. Savored every bite of this eel meal!! The best in Japanese food is this.

This restaurant, with its 300-year history, completely change my perception of politeness in Japanese culture…unfortunately not in a good way. I usually avoid visiting overseas restaurants rated below 4.4, but after watching a YouTube review, I decided to give this one a try even thought it was rated 4.3 on Google. We arrived at around 12:50pm and were asked to wait. After a while, a staff member told us to take the elevator, but suddenly changed her mind and asked us to sit again so she could let other Japanese customers go first. We quietly waited as more customers were led inside. When we asked why we have to keep waiting, she said it was because we had a “perfume smell,” and therefore would not be seated. My wife explained she hadn’t worn perfume…perhaps a faint scent came from her shampoo that morning. Still, the staff insisted we must wait “until there are no other customers in the restaurant.” That response sounded absurd, rude, and unreasonable. After I pointed that out, she reluctantly said we could sit in the Tatami room instead of the room with tables and chairs. We accepted, though it felt unfair especially since all non-Japanese guests seemed to be placed in the Tatami room while Japanese guests were seated in the main area. Putting our frustration aside, the Unagi itself was underwhelming, bland, ordinary and far from worth the trouble. It seems the recipe hasn’t changed in 300 years and perhaps neither has their outdated attitude towards guests who “smell good.” It’s also difficult to imagine that, people would find a hint of perfume offensive and unacceptable in a public restaurant. In conclusion, there are many other places in Osaka that serve far better Unagi with warmth, respect and genuine hospitality. I would not recommend wasting your time or money here.

What can I say other than it was some of the best unagi I have ever eaten. So delicious, tender and the sauce so light yet flavorful. I had the set you eat in a certain way and loved every bite. I also ordered the eel wrapped in egg, another treat I recommend ordering. Thank you so much for a wonderful meal and see you next time! Very friendly and welcoming staff as well.

Well-crafted dish, well-deserved to wait for cooking. Love the eel liver soup; very refreshing. Service is also great. Suggest you come for the freshly made grilled eel on top of rice when visiting Osaka!

We were looking for places to have a late lunch after visiting Osaka Castle on a hot day. When I did some research prior to visiting Osaka, Honke Shibato 本家 柴藤 was highly recommended. They have been around for about 300 years and 13 generations. If you are looking for Osaka style unagi don, hitsumabushi, or other styles of unagi don, this place offers them in Japanese or English menus along with instructions on how to eat hitsumabushi. While you may have to wait during busy lunch time, when my group visited here after 2 PM we did not have to wait at all. I had a few friends visiting from overseas, who had never tried Japanese grilled eel before. But they all loved the texture, flavor, and atmosphere, and could not stop talking about this place during our trip to Osaka. The eels were soft, gentle yet flavorful. If it is your first time trying this type of dish, I would recommend the hitsumabushi (called hitsumaMUshi here) style! It is not only delicious, but also quite enjoyable to discover different eating methods that suit your palate. There are many other Japanese grilled eel places in Osaka that are amazing; however, if you are nearby, I think this place would be certainly worth visiting. Just FYI, I believe they are a cash only business. They also close at 5:00 PM for the day and are closed for Sunday/Monday.

This is an amazing local Unagi spot, the eel was very creamy and flavorful. Expect to wait for your food. I had to wait around half an hour. Atmosphere was very peaceful and calming. come here for a great local hearty meal.

Since I am not a Japanese , I can’t tell if they are 100% authentic unagi but I feel they are . A very special thing is they have unagi embedded inside the “lower deck” of the rice , I don’t see this so often nowadays . I should probably come again if I am nearby .

Indulged with 300 years old eel cuisine restaurant in Umeda. The eel taste was savoury and tender. The atmosphere was great its like sitting at ancient Japanese culture dinning room.

Great service as is almost always the case in Japan. The eel here made up for a previous less than tasty experience at another eel restaurant in Kyoto. Maybe that's due to the fact that they been cooking up eel for over 300 years. The omelette with eel was great. But the eel over sauces rice was phenomenal. Also loved the fried eel vertebrae snap that they send to the table first. Super crunchy and fun to eat. The restaurant does not show its age as it is modern, which is a shame. Would have been even better with an old school feel.

Honke Shibato's unagi is one of those "must-try-at-least-once" kinds of things, along the same vein as Kobe beef and ramen. Sure, you could probably get it anywhere in Japan but wouldn't it be best to try it the way the pros make it? And with a 300-year-old legacy, you know Honke Shibato is one of the pros. It's with this mindset that we ventured out to try them. We arrived early and didn't have to wait at all. Three women warmly greeted us and made us feel at home right away. They shuffled us in and one of them escorted us up in an escalator into a warm room. Before we stepped in, she asked us to take off our shoes and we entered a cozy room with low-set tables. It reminded me of a traditional household I'd see in anime and whatnot. It was also the first time in our trip that we experienced anything like it. We ordered the Osaka-Mamushi set and a separate order of umaki. The waitress never left the room, despite the kitchen being somewhere else in the building, and was very attentive the entire time. While we did have to wait for a bit, she always kept us updated and made sure our cups of tea were never empty. Eventually, our food came and it was delicious! The eel in the Osaka-Mamushi set was crispy on the outside, and soft inside - something I've never experienced outside of this restaurant. You could tell that it was cooked with care (and potentially over a grill?). Although the sauce on top was thinner than most restaurants, it was not any less flavourful. The umaki was good as well but it paled in comparison to the Osaka-Mamushi set - mostly because you could barely taste the eel in it. Overall, it was a delicious meal and a terrific experience. That being said, it feels like another one of those things that you go to just the once to say that you've tried it. There's a minimum ¥ amount that you must order (unfortunately, I don't quite remember the amount at this point) and each item on the menu is quite pricey. While the unagi was very good and did have a characteristic that I haven't found elsewhere (i.e. crispy outside, soft inside), that characteristic is also not that crucial to my enjoyment of the dish. Perhaps I'm just not an unagi connoisseur - I can appreciate the difference but I personally don't feel like it warrants that steep of a price hike. Personally, I'm glad to have experienced it and would recommend you going for the experience. But if you are like me - not a unagi connoisseur - and looking for something more cost-effective, maybe try somewhere else...