Yuina’s favorites—International cuisine, here in Osaka

Konnichiwa! I’m Yuina Deguchi from NMB48.
And I’d like to show you some of my favorite restaurants in Osaka.
These are some of the best places in the city to get authentic foods from different parts of Southeast Asia. Thai food, Malaysian, Vietnamese… despite being nearby there are a lot of different Asian foods I’ve never tried. So let’s check them out!

■Ryuterhua (龍多風亜), authentic Thai cooking

Everyone who works here is Thai!
The restaurant seems a lot like a food stand that you might see in Thailand. And when you walk inside Ryuterhua, the aroma of spices in the air will make your mouth water.

The menu is full of names that I’ve never heard before, so it makes my heart pound with excitement just looking at the menu. I decided to try the crowd-favorite khao man gai.

The spicy sauce will keep your appetite on fire! Khao man gai

Khao man gai is a Thai dish of steamed chicken on a bed of rice that you top with a drizzle of the accompanying sauce.
The Thai rice is cooked in a garlic and chicken soup so it is extra flavorful!

The steamed chicken has little fat so it tastes very light and the soft chicken trimmings are absolutely delicious. I’m a huge fan of the trimmings. Plus the ginger, chili powder, and cilantro add the perfect amount of spice to get your appetite going.

It was so good that I couldn’t stop until I finished the whole thing. FYI, in Thailand, chopsticks are only used for noodle dishes. Everyone in this restaurant was using a fork and spoon to eat.

The walls of the restaurant are decorated in posters and photographs from Thailand. And it’s a favorite with customers from Asia, so you can hear people speaking a number of different languages. It really feels like visiting in a foreign country.

■Malaysia Boleh, the gentle flavors of Malaysian home-cooking

Located near Umeda Sky Building, this restaurant serves up the flavors of Malaysian home-cooking and the Chinese/Malaysian fusion Nyonya cuisine. This style of cooking is usually mild and relies heavily on coconut so it’s a good option for people who don’t like strong spices. I went with the nasi lemak, a popular breakfast meal that offers a lot of nutrition in one serving.

Savor the flavors of Malaysian cooking with Nasi Lemak

This dish varies from household to household, restaurant to restaurant. At Malaysia Boleh, it came with coconut rice, chicken satay, seafood sambal, shrimp chips, and chicken curry.

I recommend the chicken satay! The peanut sauce features bold coconut flavors and the coconut compliments the chicken curry so well it will have you hooked. It’s a completely different style from Japanese curry.
It is rich and creamy and so easy to eat.

Definitely order the pineapple juice with your meal!
Do you know why?
Because in Malaysia, that’s the thing to do. When you’re out and about enjoying street food, you drink a glass of pineapple juice to bring down the spiciness in different dishes. Let the refreshing taste of pineapple juice cleanse your palate so you can enjoy a variety of different foods.

■Healthy and delicious! Vietnamese cuisine at DZO!

In Vietnamese, “dzo!” is what you say when you make a toast.
And those happy drinking vibes are exactly what you’ll find when you step through the doors of Dzo! Here, I had two of Vietnam’s most well-known foods, a bowl of pho and plate of rice paper rolls.

Surprisingly delicious noodles, that are healthy too!

This looked so good, I had to take a photo before taking a bite.

This was actually my first time eating pho and I was shocked at how smooth and chewy the noodles are.
They’re not slippery at all, just a nice thick noodle.
And the heavy sprinkling of cilantro gave the bowl a green freshness that was absolutely mouthwatering. There was only a small amount of lean beef in the soup so it tasted incredibly healthy too. The broth was sufficiently flavorful to stand on its own, but you can also add lemon, soy sauce, pickled peppers, and chili sauce to add more complexity. Altering the flavor as you go, is one of the fun things about eating this dish.

I added some lemon and it instantly brightened up the flavor, making it so easy to eat.
The chili sauce gave it an extra kick and brought out the rich soup flavors too.

Eating rice paper rolls like a snack

In Vietnam, these are considered a snack and make the perfect appetizer. In Japan, we often dip them in sweet chili sauce, but in Vietnam it’s more common to see them served with a dish of miso and peanut sauce. It has a slightly sweet flavor and matches the rice paper roll perfectly. Inside there is shiso, shrimp, peanuts, cucumber, and rice noodles, all squeezed together in this somewhat chewy roll that will leave your mouth bursting with flavor.

And in Vietnam, you eat them with your hands.

There are so many things on the menu that I wanted to try… beef sinew sautéed in garlic scapes, coconut steamed clams, and more. Their are so many main dishes and sides on the menu that I’m determined to come back with a group so I can sample a little of everything.

I tried a lot of new dishes from Southeast Asia that I’d never tried before and they were all delicious! Each one had its own unique flavors and kind of made me want to actually visit the different countries that they came from. I hope you found somewhere in this list that you would like to try. If you did, please use my hashtag #ゆいなの推しメシ so I can find your post.

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Yuina Deguchi

I’m a member of the idol group NMB48 from Osaka. Someday I hope to be a food reporter. I love to eat so you can find more of my favorite restaurants and foods on my social media accounts. Or look for my hashtag #ラビグルメ
X (Twitter)：@yuina_laby
Instagram：@yui_laby0622
TikTok：@yui_labygurume