Kani Doraku Dotonbori Higashi Mise — Restaurant in Osaka

I wanted to give this a 5 star I really did and would have been 5 star had it not be for what happened after but let's get to the good.

They are very full, try booking a place Sunday night and only manage to get it in this building on Wed, the main building was completely full all week.

We ended up ordering basically the 2 most expensive thing the king crab meal set and the hairy crab meal set. We got a private room with a nice view of the river and over all very nice room.

The meal was beautiful, each dish well laid out. I'll say raw crab was not really my thing, the texture of it was too slimy for me so my friend who was with me ended up eating most the raw stuff after a certain point after I tried a bite. (Normally really good with Sushi but crab was just too slimy)

All was good until after 1hr or so after we left my stomach started hurting and it go worse and worse. Had diarrhea but the pain remained. My friend went out to get some medicine for me and I'm not sure if it helped at all. I couldn't really sleep as I kept walking up ever 1hr or so due to the pain but at least the diarrhea stopped after the med. At some point I woke up and decided to puke as much out as I could and only then did I feel a lot better. Finally stopped hurting like some 10 hours later in the morning. Was basically dead the day after spending the day resting.

My friend ended up with some rashes but nothing as bad as I went though. I don't know if there was something bad or my body just reacted really poorly to raw crab but sadly I sour the experience of this fairly expensive meal. Would not go again unfortunately.

Be very careful if you can handle raw crab before ordering set that has...

Fantastic experience.

I visited back in January for a weekend lunch with a reservation.

I got the most expensive set from the lunch menu which was around the 7000 yen mark. For the amount and quality of food received, I thought it was worth the money.

We first started with some crab legs and vegetables, served with a vinegar sauce and I believe a sauce made from crab inners. This starter was decent as we were able to taste the subtle sweet and salty flavour of the crab, and the vinegar complemented it well. The vegetables tasted fresh.

The crab sashimi was solid. It was quite delicate and subtle in flavour and had an interesting chewy texture to it.

The chawanmushi was good. It was smooth, creamy and the top layer tasted like it was infused with lemon zest as it had a bitter, citrus flavour.

The grilled crab was excellent and was one of my favourite items. Cooking this way helped to pronounce the sweetness of the crab. It also had a nice flaky texture.

I also enjoyed the crab gratin. It was cheesy and rich.

The crab hotpot was also one of my highlights of the meal. The light dashi broth complimented the sweetness and saltiness of the crab. The accompaniments were fresh and worked well with the broth.

The crab tempura was solid. It was fried well and crispy.

The crab sushi was also decent. The rice had a strong vinegar flavour, but I was still able to taste the flavour of the crab and the other ingredients.

We ended with vanilla ice cream and matcha which was whisked at the table. The ice cream was fine, but unfortunately icy.

Overall, this lunch set was quite good and each item was fairly consistent in taste and...

Arrived for a very early dinner reservation and saw people being turned away. Reservations are a must.

We spent approx $200 on dinner for a family of 5 (2 adults and 3 kids) and ordered a mix of alcohol and soft drinks, 2 plates of sushi and a couple of sides along with a middle-tier dinner set (made of several small courses including crab served sashimi-style, grilled, tempura style and finally shabu shabu with vegetables, noodles, rice and egg).

The serving sizes were not large and I can imagine that many would expect more for the price paid. We found that there was just enough food for each person to try a small piece of each starter course, with the final remnants of the shabu shabu course mixed with rice and egg to form a congee finishing off any lingering hunger.

Service was good as expected. If you’re a fan of Japanese seafood and crab in particular then the flavours were quite nice. For everyone else; the sights, sounds and variety of food options on Dotonbori might be more acceptable to both the...