There are more and more Japanese restaurants in the world. They are very delicious and the popularity has an unshakable status in the world. Japanese foods will expand in the world even more in the future.

When I cook a Japanese meal for American people or people in some other countries, I think hard what Japanese foods I should make for them. There are so many good Japanese foods that sometimes it’s hard to decide which Japanese food I should cook.

I searched a statistics regarding which Japanese foods are popular for foreign people in the world and made two figures based on the survey done by Japan External Trade Organization. If you are interested in how the survey was conducted such as the investigation period and so on, please click here to see the survey in more details.

Here is the survey result for Japanese food ranking for foreigners. One thing I would like to point out is that there are not much gap between each dish in Figure 1 below. So, the ranking order is not that important and any food can be No1 in the future with globalization.

If you are interested in which Japanese foods are popular especially in Italy, France, USA, South Korea, and China, please click here to see Figure 2.

Also, if you are interested in how fast Japanese restaurants are growing in the world, please click here.







1. Sushi

As was expected, the most popular Japanese foods in the world is sushi. I cannot believe that sushi was just a snack in Edo era in Japan. Now there are countless numbers of sushi restaurants in the world and some of them are very expensive. I wonder if a sushi chef in Edo era would have thought sushi would become this big 200 years later.

2. Sashimi

Sashimi came in as the second popular Japanese food. I imagine sashimi spread to the world along with sushi. This is easy to make.



3. Yakitori

Yakitori is as popular as sashimi at 7.1% in the Figure 1.





4. Tempura

American people likes Tempura. According to my experience, kabocha tempura (Japanese pumpkin tempura) is the best for foreigners.



5. Ramen

Ramen could be No.1 favorite Japanese food in the world in the future. I have eaten a variety of ramen in Japan and I know there are so many good ramen that hasn’t reached outside of Japan. This food has a huge potential. According to Figure 1, there are only a couple of percentage differences between each food in the ranking. Ramen will go up in the ladder in the future !

6. Udon

Udon is behind ramen in terms of popularity in the US. I see less udon restaurants than ramen restaurants in the US. Still udon is very popular and delicious.

7. Sukiyaki

I’ve heard that the song “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto was named Sukiyaki because that was a word American people knew back when the song was released. Both sukiyakis are pretty good lol

8. Shabu-shabu

I don’t see shabu-shabu on the menu of Japanese restaurants often. Although thin sliced meat is hard to come by in some places in the US, foreigners would love it if you cook it for them. It’s also fun to do “shabu-shabu” (shabu-shabu gets its name from the Japanese onomatopoeia for “swish, swish,” as each piece of meat is lightly swished around in boiling cooking pot.)

9. Curry Rice

10. Tonkatsu

11. Miso Soup

12. Takoyaki

13. Soba

14. Okonomiyaki

15. Yakisoba

16. Gyudon

17. Katsudon

18. Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken)

19. Onigiri (Japanese rice ball)

Japanese food ranking in Italy, France, USA, South Korea, and China

Lastly, I made Figure 2 below just for your reference. Figure2 illustrates which Japanese foods are popular in 5 countries: Italy, France, USA, South Korea, and China. The food circled in red is the number one favorite Japanese dish in the country and the food circled in yellow shows the second favorite.





