THE HUNGER GAMES

Mountains of shaved ice. Steamed monkfish liver. Kaleidoscopic fruit sandwiches. Ramen, sushi, and okonomiyaki. Though Tokyo and Kyoto get most of the attention, Osaka is a food lover's paradise. Adam Erace lets his taste buds lead him from one mind-blowing meal to the next.

- Adam Erace

THROUGH AN UNBLINKING black eyeball, a 20-foot-high scarlet octopus ogles my lunch. 

She lords over the second floor of a restaurant in Osaka's Shinsekai quarter, a pastiche of Paris and Coney Island erected in the early 1900s, neglected by the midcentury, and respected today for its retro-futurist architecture and first-class fast food. Ursula-san already clutches takoyaki (octopus fritters) and kushikatsu (deep-fried skewers) in her white-suckered tentacles but, unsurprisingly for a native Osakan, she's still hungry.

Between us is a checkerboard lane and a monsoon. Seated by a rain-lashed window, my guide, Noriyuki Ikegami, and I are safe inside Tsuruhashi Fugetsu, a chain specializing in another Osakan treasure, okonomiyaki. With the muscle memory and blasé demeanor of someone who has done this ten thousand times, our server dumps a bowl of shaved cabbage and batter onto the hot, hissing grill built into our table. Over the next 20 minutes, she periodically reappears to add shrimp, steak, and pork; flip the pancake and paint it with mayo and a sweet, tangy brown sauce; fry up a sunny-side egg to slide on top; and finally bury it all in dancing bonito flakes. Okonomiyaki is a delicious mess. As is Osaka.

You can't just call Japan's third-largest city a food town. Two syllables cannot encompass the diversity and quality of the cooking, from hot and saucy takoyaki on the street to traditionsteeped kaiseki at the Michelin-starred Nishitenma Nakamura, where chef-owner Akemi Nakamura tenderizes squid sashimi with knife strokes as delicate as calligraphy. Osakans dine with athletic fervor and passion, and everyone I meet wants to know-demands to know, really-the same thing: "What have you eaten?" I tell them: