Hiroshima Night Bites: Guided Evening Food Tour with Tastings

Hiroshima's food scene comes alive after dark, and this three-hour guided evening food tour is a straight line to the best of it. Led by a hand-picked expert local guide, the walk moves through the city's liveliest eating districts, the covered Hondori arcade with its bright side alleys, and the neon-washed streets of Nagarekawa, Hiroshima's nightlife quarter, stopping to eat and drink as you go, with the tastings included in the price. The undisputed star is Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, the city's beloved layered savory pancake: unlike the Osaka version, everything here is stacked rather than mixed, cabbage, batter, pork and a heap of noodles built up in strata on the teppan griddle and finished with sweet-savory sauce, ideally eaten straight off the hot plate with a metal spatula. Your guide takes you where locals queue for it and explains why the city defends its version so fiercely. Around the okonomiyaki, the evening ranges through other local specialties, with drinks folded into the tastings, and through the after-work theater of the city itself: salarymen ducking under noren curtains, lantern-lit counters eight seats deep, the particular energy of a rebuilt city that knows how to enjoy itself. Because the guide handles ordering and navigation, the venues that intimidate non-Japanese speakers, the best ones, usually, open right up. Come hungry: the tastings across the evening add up to a full dinner, and you finish the night with a mental map of where to eat for the rest of your stay.