Tebasaki Wings — Nagoya's Crispy-Spicy Chicken Specialty

Tebasaki (手羽先, chicken wings) is Nagoya's definitive drinking snack — deep-fried wings coated in sweet-spicy sauce and showered with sesame seeds and black pepper. Unlike Buffalo wings, tebasaki are fried twice for extra-crispy skin, then tossed in a sauce combining soy sauce, sake, sugar, garlic, and chili pepper. The result is sticky-sweet with building heat from pepper, creating the perfect accompaniment to cold beer.

The dish was invented in 1963 by Yamachan (やまちゃん), a Nagoya izakaya chain that remains the tebasaki gold standard. Wings arrive at the table glistening, almost candied in appearance, with visible sesame seeds. Proper eating technique involves picking the wing clean with your hands (napkins provided), then sucking the bones to extract maximum flavor. Tebasaki has become so synonymous with Nagoya that the city consumes more chicken wings per capita than anywhere else in Japan.