Shanxi-Style Chinese Breakfast at Tengachaya,Osaka

Tucked away in a nostalgic, Showa-era shopping arcade near Nishi-Tengachaya Station in Osaka is a small Chinese breakfast shop called Yi Ri San (一日三餐). I can’t pronounce the whole name properly, but at least I understand what it means.

As soon as I entered, the staff casually greeted me with “Ni hao!” (Hello! in Chinese) and continued speaking to me entirely in Chinese.

The shop appears to specialize in breakfast, so the menu is fairly simple. The boiled dumplings and liangpi (cold wheat-starch noodles) seemed a little expensive for breakfast, but everything was handmade, and the atmosphere felt just like a small local eatery in mainland China. Even the youtiao (Chinese fried dough sticks) were made from scratch, with the dough prepared right there in the kitchen rather than using frozen products.

I ordered youtiao and doufunao (soft tofu pudding). Unlike the sweet versions commonly found in Taiwan and Guangdong, or the spicy versions served in places such as Sichuan, this doufunao came in a savory, soy sauce-based broth flavored with cilantro. I dipped the youtiao into the broth and ate them together. It was an ordinary, everyday Chinese breakfast.

No other customers came in while I was eating, but several delivery orders arrived through Panda Takeout (熊猫外卖), a food delivery service used by Chinese residents. The surrounding neighborhood looks like an ordinary Japanese residential area, but I imagine quite a few Chinese people live nearby and regularly order breakfast from this little shop.