Mensho-no Kokorotsukushi Tsurutontan Kitashinchimise

I had booked this place, but when we arrived, we were asked to leave by a waiter who could hardly speak English, telling us that our restaurant was elsewhere. I was showing the email that confirmed our booking, and he pointed out that the restaurant was upstairs (?). I was quite baffled, but I compl...ied with his request, and went to the other place he pointed at (which didn't even look like the pictures for TsuruTonTan Kitashinchi), and a waitress there not only confirmed that the indication was wrong, but took the time to take me back to TsuruTonTan Kitashinchi. I rang the restaurant and the person who answered told me for 3 minutes they couldn't speak English. We waited outside without being allowed in, in spite of having made a reservation. My only conclusion is that they don't like foreign customers, or a couple of two men. Avoid like the plague. Osaka is the kitchen of Japan and there are far better places where they will be happy to welcome you.

Visited March 2024

I am a big Udon fan and can't pass an opportunity on being able to have a bowl of creative udon here in Japan without breaking the bank. I decided to be adventurous and tried the carbonara soup udon, which was delicious. I regret not ordering a large portion and here you can order large portion (u...p to two times) without paying extra. Both the salad and fried chicken were good too. I took pictures of dishes my friends had, too. I highly recommend it and you can't go wrong with the TsuruTonTan chain.

Visited March 2019

This was one of the best Udon places we ate it during our trips to Japan. It was located down a couple flights of stairs and there was no elevator so keep this in mind in case you need a more accessible restaurant. Upon entering, we were asked to take off our shoes since the setting was very tradi...tional. Shoes were locked up in lockers with its own big wooden key (maybe so you don't loose it!). We were led to the one western style table in the restaurant so that alleviated the need to sit on the tatami mat covered floors (which was ok after all the walking we did that day). We perused the menu and had a hard time figuring out what to eat. There was quite a few options and combinations of udon to choose from. After ringing the chime on our table, our waiter came quickly and we selected the curry udon, curry udon with pork cutlet, udon with tempura, kitsune udon with large fried sweet tofu and the deluxe udon with veggies and meat. We all ordered 1.5x the normal amount of noodles but you had the option of ordering up to 3x. Also we chose the thick versus thin udon noodles. The menu also offered sushi and shabu shabu but our focus was just on udon that night. Our order was udon was served in these very large, black bowls (almost as big as one of daughter's head)! We thought this would be a challenge to finish the whole bowl but all did well devouring practically everything. The noodles seemed to be freshly hand made with varying thickness of noodles with nice chewy texture. Broth was tasty and tempura and pork cutlet lightly fried and not oily. For those of us with curry udon, we were given paper bibs which saved our shirts a couple of times. Service was very good throughout our meal. Pay your tab at the front. Credit cards were accepted. A very enjoyable meal for us and one we will try to eat at again. The restaurant sells take home udon meals in the lobby and I just saw that they opened their first one in New York.

Visited June 2018

I asked at my hotel for an Udon restaurant and the girl at reception told me to go to Tsurutontan. I went in for dinner and enjoyed a delicious bowl of Kitsune Udon. The bowl was huge with a large chunk of tofu floating above the thick udon noodles. Great service and delicious udon noodle soup and t...he price was very reasonable. One bowl of udon, some tuna sushi roll and 1 beer was only around 1,700 Yen. Highly recommended for traditional Osakan Udon noodles.

Visited October 2017

My wife and I walked out from our hotel - Hotel Elserine Osaka hoping to go for a teppanyaki dinner. Checked out some F&B outlets near the hotel and found this Tsurutontan outlet. Googled it after the dinner only to find out that it was part of a popular udon chain. We had udon salad (many kinds of... veg mixed with prawn, salmon sashimi and chicken fillet), salmon and tuna maki rolls, creamy prawn udon soup (yummy) and beef sliced steak served on a hot plate. It was a good and satisfying dinner. The service staff speaks little english but sign language was enough to place our order.

Visited April 2017