What is makanai and my experience with an elder auntie!

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Japanese food is becoming more and more popular which makes me very happy, but I always feel there is a missing piece. It's probably because Japanese food isn't really just about sushi, poke bowls or tempura.

And I want to explore what the missing part is, by writing a series of things I know about Japanese food. Today, I want to talk about Makanai.

hokke fish teishoku


What is Makanai?

Makanai=賄い is closest to meaning "staff meal" in Japanese, which you will get a staff meal if you work a particular shift for a restaurant job.

Less frequently but it could also be somebody that takes care of the staff meal of a group of employees in non-food related industries, like geisha for example.

There is a recent series on Netflix, "The Makanai, cooking for the Maiko House" in which a staff dormitory for the maikos will have a makanai or a cook that takes care of the food of the maikos.

”Makanau"賄う can translate to "take care of," especially food related.

Everyone needs to eat to live, so we makanau our food expenses creatively.

One good way for the Japanese to take care of their food expense is to work for restaurants.

Eating is Living

The older I get the more I feel is important to eat firm healthy meals.

The makanai cook of the Maiko House Kiyo cooks meals based on the season, different occasions, and traditions of the maikos, or simply requests for what the maiko wants to eat.

Kiyo images what might be nutritious and beneficial for the maikos on that day, with what she has in the pantry. 

There is definitely more freedom in what she will cook, and she often cooks things from her faraway hometown, Aomori. It helps her best friend, Sumire, who grew up together. Sumire is striving to become a star Maiko, and Kiyo always tries to support Sumire with her cooking.

I think the part that you can be creative with making makanai is the art of it, and the way Japanese cook home food is with lots of love.

The first time I experienced"makanai"

Growing up in the U.S. I believe my first makanai came later than many Japanese, and it was with a teishoku restaurant I worked part-time for when I was a student at a university in Kyoto.

I lived very close to the campus, and along the way, there was just one traditional teishoku restaurant that had a "staff wanted" sign. Most of the customers there were students and professors from my university.

Some example meals were:

  • tonkatsu set (set is rice, pickles, miso soup, and cabbage salad)
  • curry set
  • ramen set
  • shogayaki set
  • karaage set
  • simmered fish set
example of a Japanese makanai staff meal


An elder auntie was running the restaurant by herself, and she needed a staff every day just peak hours for lunch and dinner. 

I would come in for lunch, and work from around 11:30am~12:50pm. Just an hour and a half as I need to go to classes, too.

She will pay me til 1pm, which is 1.5 hours. But students are already eating by 12:40pm. So the auntie will ask me what I want to eat while working, so I could have a fast makanai and run to my 1pm class. 

A lot of times though, the auntie would add 3-4 side dishes on top of that, which is so much food! But very heartwarming.

The purpose of Makanai might be changing

Ecological and economic to more profit and incentive

From what I understand, makanai used to be more of a staff meal using the leftover ingredients of the dishes served to the customers.

The leftover fishhead, bones, and vegetable scraps. We use these parts that won't make the dish look good or taste the best, but is nutritious and can be eaten. It reduces food waste, which is good for the restaurant business.

In the manga, One Piece, one of the main characters Sanji, the cook competed with the kitchen of the Navy. 

While the chefs made the eye-catching, gorgeous food they usually serve to the customers, Sanji took the leftover scraps they used like potato skin and root of the broccoli, fish head, and bones to make "makanai."

This is what it used to be. Less food waste, more nutrition. But bigger chain restaurants tend to let staff eat their menu like what the navy chefs did, and give a discount. More delicious most of the time, but it could be less nutritious, and more food waste, too.

The different purposes of makanai

I talked about how the makanai used to be more of a bond with the owner and the staff. I love how the owners wanted to take care of the staff and cook for them. They care about the workers and pay forward on what the owner can do to help the staff.

But just like in other countries, if you work for a higher-end restaurant, then makanai can become an experiment of a new menu, or a tasting menu to better serve the customers.

This was to taste all the Hokkaido seafood ingredients in the menu of the bistro I used to work for.


This is a makanai cooked by a Taiwanese chef that came to the same bistro. While he tasted our seafood, the wagyu, and other Hokkaido ingredients and menu, he introduced us to Taiwanese dishes like Lu Rou Fan (Taiwanese Pork Rice Bowl 卤肉饭)

Lu Rou Fan (Taiwanese Pork Rice Bowl, 卤肉饭



But my favorite part of the makanai culture is the communication through cooking.

Some of the staff will just work for the money and take whatever benefit. But there always are a handful of staff that remembers that they're recognized as somebody, like a family or relative per se.

And I think the bond the owners and the staff have in these Japanese restaurants is what I don't want it to die.

Extra dishes if the auntie remembers you 

Going back to where I used to work at the teishoku place, the owner auntie would give free side dishes to the students she knows, that come regularly. The students also will come back because of her kindness. 

When she had a new menu, she would give it away, too, and get happy regulars and feedback.

If none of the part-timers could work, the customers helped her. We also asked around if our friends could help the restaurant for an hour or two for some bucks and a staff meal, and everyone was actually delighted. So she was never short-staffed.

Might be the smartest strategy to run a business!

The auntie didn't really make much money from all this, 200~300USD/day which is not really enough to cover all the expenses. But she loved taking care of the students, and she's happy talking about her staff stepping up the uni ladder, and how everyone around her is doing. She also always had something to eat from her restaurant to make a living.

After her daughter got ill, she decided to go back to her hometown. I visited her once. She grows her own veggies, and yuzu fruits come rolling down to her house yard. Her neighbors share food with each other and help each other out. I think it's very "wealthy" how they live.

yuzu tree


I hope the tradition of teishoku and makanai continues

You'll hear quite a lot of similar stories in Japan.

There was a very famous gyoza shop near Kyoto University, and the owner gave free meals to those who couldn't afford to eat. "Let's exchange a gyoza meal, and your help washes dishes for an hour." so many people went there.

He was a franchise for now a very big gyoza chain, "gyoza no osho" 餃子の王将 but he retired. It was big news in Japan. Then in 2023 he find a small space near his apartment and started again, which also became viral.

A lot of Kyoto graduates still remember this restaurant and will come back to eat when they're back in Kyoto.

So this could be a makanai, too. "Makanai" is a mixture of traditional and modern ways of staff meal, and a little bit of business and taking care of each other.

It's just very fulfilling to have people eat your food and be happy with it.

Right now restaurant cooking is being replaced by robots. 

Although the technology is amazing, the connections of exchange of "care" is something becoming very scarce in Japan.

So I hope I play a part, too, and share simple home cooking ideas from Japan.

Follow Ryu Aomi's food journey

In Japanese, Ryu 龍 means "Dragon" and Aomi 青海 means "Blue Ocean." I was inspired by Sanji from a best-seller manga One Piece in his dream to find the mythical All Blue, where all fish from the world meet. 

So, will there be a place in the real world where all ingredients meet? This blog is my notes of all the food places and knowledge I encountered and experienced!

Blue Ocean comes from the fact that I've lived close to and loved the ocean, the One Piece All Blue, and the blue ocean means "going for no competition."

Especially after Covid, competing for more fame and money doesn't mean much to me anymore. Instead, I long to communicate through good food and stay in good mood🤤

Ryu Aomi's food site in Japanese 日本語 





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