Osaka - Sahara Location

VERDICT: The most authentic Japanese restaurant in Las Vegas.

I lived in Japan for two years and consequently I ate food there.  I grew to love Japanese food even more than before I moved there.  Not just the stuff you are used to eating in generic Japanese restaurants, but also the regular, daily food....the meat and potatoes, if you will.  When I came back to America I was devastated that I could not find any restaurant that prepared it quite the way that I had it in Japan, nor the types of food that I had in Japan.  For example, I did not have teriyaki once in Japan...OK, I had it once at McDonald's of all places.  They had a teriyaki burger, which was absolutely horrible.  Here in America, you would be hard pressed to find a Japanese restaurant that didn't have teriyaki. 

One of my favorite dishes from Japan was tonkatsu, which is a pork cutlet pounded thin, deep fried with panko, and served with shredded cabbage, karashi (Japanese hot mustard), rice and tonkatsu sauce.  It's very simple and delicious.  The combination of flavors is exquisite.  So much so that if I eat tonkatsu without cabbage, I don't like it.  It all goes together magically.  Osaka does tonkatsu right.  I hate it when I go to a Japanese restaurant and order tonkatsu and they dribble the sauce over the pork rather than serve it on the side.  It just isn't right and it lacks the right flavor.  The other thing that I hate is when you ask the waiter for hot mustard (or karashi) and they act like you're absolutely insane.  At least, where I lived, on Hokkaido, karashi was always served.

They also have various donburi, which is a staple in Japan.  Their oyakodon is exactly Japanese style.  Oyakodon means family bowl.  While that sounds like it is food for the whole family, it is called that because you are eating the whole family, chicken and egg, cute and morbid, very Japanese.

They have a teppanyaki room as well (think Benihana), and a sushi bar.  I prefer to eat my tonkatsu in the tatami mat rooms though.  They also have shabu-shabu, which is a boiling pot that you cook food in at the table.  Greg doesn't like shabu-shabu, because who wants to cook when they go out.  He does have a point.  I don't like Osaka's shabu-shabu because they don't bring the best assortment of boilable vegetables and noodles. 

They even have onigiri, another daily Japanese food (you have to ask for it, not on the menu).  Onigiri is a rice ball and it seems like you can make it yourself, but it never turns out right for me.  They make it perfectly.

Their sushi is good, but expensive.  I usually get one roll, the Oh-My-God roll.  I don't know what is on it, but it will make your eyes roll back in your head from deliciousness.