Unagi no Kabayaki

The surface gleams with the sheen of the glaze and carries the smell of charcoal. Inside, the Kanto style comes out soft and pillowy thanks to a steaming step, while the Kansai style, which skips steaming, keeps a crisp bite at the skin. The sweet soy glaze is topped up with every batch grilled, and some shops use a "secret sauce" said to have been replenished for decades. Some restaurants fry the bones separately and serve them on their own plate, offering a crunch quite different from the flesh.

The eel is split along the back or belly, boned and headed, then grilled plain before the glaze goes on — a "shirayaki then kabayaki" sequence said to be standard. In eastern Japan a steaming step follows the plain grill and precedes the final grilling, rendering out excess fat for a softer result. Western Japan skips that steaming step, grilling straight through over direct heat to foreground the char.

One account holds that Edo's samurai culture favored the softer result of steaming, while Osaka's merchant culture settled on serving it grilled straight through. In places with the right mix of easy eel farming — a brackish lake rich in glass eels — and a temple town drawing crowds of visitors, kabayaki shops are thought to have clustered and turned the dish into a local specialty. Where water and foot traffic met, long-established kabayaki restaurants seem to have found room to grow. Even under one name, kabayaki, the way the fish is split is said to carry something of each place's temperament.