おぐら Ogura @Miyazaki, Japan

It is said that チキン南蛮 Chicken Nanban, originated from 延岡市 Nobeoka City in 宮崎県 Miyazaki Prefecture. More precisely, it all started from 直ちゃん Naochan, a small restaurant which serves its fried chicken breast marinated with Nanban vinegar, without tartar sauce. Nowadays, there are also restaurants that use chicken thigh meat instead, as it is more juicy and tender.

The first restaurant that started serving this dish with tartar sauce was said to be おぐら Ogura, within 宮崎市 Miyazaki City. So it seemed fitting that our first dinner in Miyazaki would be here 🙂

We headed for おぐら本店 Ogura Honten, which was located in a little alley. The restaurant looked like a little cottage, and it was fairly quiet at 6.30pm on a Sunday (and soon we realised that Miyazaki was basically rather quiet all the time throughout our stay :P)

We were given a menu in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, so ordering was not an issue. We shared a  チキン南蛮 Chicken Nanban, and it was possible to opt out of rice (¥1010 with rice, ¥960 without rice).

While the chicken was definitely juicy, it was a bit on the tough side, probably because it was the breast meat. We liked the addictive tartar sauce 😀 Even though we opted out of rice, there was carbohydrates that came in the form of spaghetti, and refreshing cabbage to balance the meal.

Do note that there is another branch with parking available, if you are driving and have a craving for chicken nanban 🙂