Kagoshima Kurobuta Berkshire Pork Shabu-Shabu, Miyazaki Chicken Nanban with Tartar Sauce & Kumamoto Akaushi Red Beef

Introduced to the Satsuma Domain over 400 years ago and bred exclusively with pure English Berkshire stock since the Meiji era, Kagoshima Kurobuta (nicknamed Kagoshima’s "Black Diamond") is finished on a diet of local sweet potatoes (Satsuma-imo), yielding snow-white fat that is sweet, clean, and non-greasy alongside remarkably tender muscle fibers. The quintessential way to savor it is Kurobuta Shabu-Shabu, where paper-thin slices of Berkshire belly and loin are swished through hot dashi broth with mountains of shredded white scallions and dipped straight into savory tsuyu broth, or deep-fried as thick-cut Kurobuta Tonkatsu. Crossing into sunny Miyazaki Prefecture on the eastern coast, the cities of Nobeoka and Miyazaki gave birth to two of Japan’s most iconic poultry dishes: Chicken Nanban and Miyazaki Jidori Sumibiyaki. For Chicken Nanban, tender chicken pieces are coated in flour and egg batter, fried golden, and plunged sizzling hot into a sweet-and-tangy vinegar bath (nanban-zu) before being crowned with rich homemade egg tartar sauce; meanwhile, Jidori Sumibiyaki sears free-range local chicken directly over roaring hardwood charcoal flames until blackened with an intoxicating smoky aroma. On the vast volcanic caldera grasslands of Mount Aso in Kumamoto, herds of reddish-brown Kumamoto Akaushi (Japanese Brown cattle) graze freely in the open air, producing lean, healthful beef bursting with deep red-meat umami—most famously served as Akaushi Don, a rice bowl ringed with medium-rare steak slices topped with an onsen egg and spicy miso paste, alongside Kumamoto’s centuries-old tradition of Basashi (marbled horsemeat sashimi) dipped in sweet Kyushu soy sauce with grated ginger and garlic.