What to eat at a Japanese matsuri food stall

The smell hits you before the stalls do. Grilled meat fat, soy sauce caramelising on hot iron, something sweet frying in oil. Japanese matsuri, the street festivals that run from late spring through summer and into autumn, are as much about eating as anything else. The food stalls lining the approach roads are called yatai, and if you have never eaten at one, you are missing a whole side of Japan that does not show up in restaurant guides.

Yakitori is the entry point for most people. Skewered chicken grilled over charcoal, brushed with tare sauce or just salted. At a good yatai the smoke is thick enough to get into your clothes and stay there. Order a few sticks and eat standing up. There is no wrong way to do it.

Takoyaki deserves more attention than it usually gets. Octopus balls cooked in a cast iron mould, flipped with a pick until they form a perfect sphere, then finished with mayonnaise, bonito flakes, and a dark savory sauce. The outside is firm and slightly crisp. The inside is still liquid. This is intentional. Eating one straight from the paper tray is genuinely dangerous in terms of heat, so wait thirty seconds unless you enjoy a burnt tongue at a festival.

Okonomiyaki at a matsuri stall is different from a restaurant version. Thinner, faster, cooked on a flat iron griddle and folded rather than built up in layers. Some stalls use squid, some use pork, some use both. Point at what you want and hand over the cash. Nobody expects you to speak Japanese at a yatai.

Karaage gets overshadowed by its reputation as an izakaya dish, but at a festival stall it is one of the best things you can eat. Fried chicken thigh, juicy inside, blistered and salty outside, served in a paper cone or a small tray. The batter is lighter than it looks. Squeeze the lemon over it if they offer one.

On the sweeter side, look for taiyaki. Fish-shaped waffle cakes filled with red bean paste, chocolate, or custard. The edges go slightly crispy when fresh off the mould. Ningyoyaki is similar but smaller, usually filled with sweet bean and shaped like a doll or a shape relevant to the local festival theme. Both are good choices if you want something that travels well while you keep walking.

Kakigori is shaved ice flavoured with syrups in colours that suggest radioactivity but taste surprisingly straightforward. Strawberry, melon, lemon. On a 33 degree afternoon in August, this is genuinely necessary rather than optional. Some stalls now offer condensed milk drizzled over the top. Get that version.

Payment at yatai is almost always cash. Bring coins as well as notes, because making change from a 1000 yen bill for a 400 yen item is fine, but breaking a 5000 will slow things down when there is a queue behind you. Most stalls are not set up for cards or IC reader payments, regardless of how modern they look from the front.

The best time to arrive is early evening when the light drops and the lanterns come on. By 9pm the popular stalls often run out of the items worth eating, and the mood changes. Go at 6pm, eat slowly, and walk back through when it is fully dark. That is the matsuri experience at its actual best.