Fried ── Fried dishes
Chikin Nanban
fried chicken with sweet vinegar and tartar sauce
Fried chicken dipped in sweet vinegar and topped with tartar sauce, said to have originated in Nobeoka, Miyazaki. It's said to trace to a sweet-vinegar fried chicken devised as staff food at a Western-food restaurant in the 1950s.
- Origin: Miyazaki Nobeoka
- About 820 km southwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Fried chicken, breaded and cooked, is dipped in a sweet-and-sour nanban vinegar and topped with an egg-rich tartar sauce. The just-fried crumb turns moist as it soaks up the vinegar while still holding some crunch, and the tartar's richness follows close behind the sweet-sour hit, with chopped pickle cutting through the whole thing to keep it light.
How it's made
Chicken breast is seasoned, breaded in flour and egg, and fried, then dipped hot into a nanban vinegar of soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and mirin. It's finished with a tartar sauce made of mayonnaise, ketchup, hard-boiled egg, cucumber, and onion. How long it soaks in the vinegar is said to determine how far the sourness carries through.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that in the 1950s, a Western-food restaurant in Nobeoka, Miyazaki, devised a sweet-vinegar fried chicken as staff food. It's said to have carried only the nanban vinegar at first, evolving into today's form with tartar sauce and a side salad, and by the 1960s it had settled in as a popular restaurant dish across the prefecture.
Before you go
Dishes in the same style
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aji FryFilleted horse mackerel breaded in panko and fried. Chiba prefecture holds some of the richest mackerel fishing grounds in Japan, and frying is thought to have taken root as a quick way to eat regional brands like the oily 'golden aji' fresh.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Miyazaki
- Futatabi DangoDumpling flour is kneaded, steamed with freshly picked mugwort folded in, then pounded a second time — a Nobeoka treat named for that unusual second working of the dough, wrapped around sweet bean paste and dusted with soybean flour into a soft, pale-green dumpling.
- Hie-zushiWild boar bones are simmered into a broth, then rice, millet, and vegetables are added and cooked down into a porridge — a Shiiba village dish built on millet, a grain said to have been eaten in Japan since before rice farming; whenever a boar was dressed, the porridge it made was shared around the whole village to see out the long winter.
- Hyuga Kurokawa Kabocha no NimonoHyuga kurokawa kabocha, a black-skinned heirloom pumpkin first grown in Miyazaki City, is cut into large chunks and simmered slowly in sugar and light soy sauce — lighter and less sweet than a Western pumpkin, but it holds its shape well and its skin is good to eat too.
- Iriko MochiGlutinous rice is parched and ground into iriko flour, then kneaded with starch syrup, rested, and cut into bars — a Miyazaki sweet said to have arrived from the Satsuma domain as a festival treat, once handed out to neighbors to wish for a child's healthy growth.
- Jidori no Miso KorobakashiJidori chicken is rolled around a dry pan with no added water, coaxed with a miso glaze without letting it catch — a home-cooked dish from around Kobayashi City, its name a western-Miyazaki dialect word for tumbling food in a pot as it cooks, the mix of vegetables and seasoning varying from house to house.
- Kanimaki-jiruA live yamataro crab — a mitten crab known locally by this name — is ground shell and all, mixed with water and miso, strained, then simmered gently — an autumn soup from the Kitago area of Nichinan City, the protein setting into soft curds like silken tofu as it heats, capturing every bit of the crab's flavor.