Budget
There are cheap food courts with the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Mr Donut on the fourth floor of Sea Mall 10AM-10PM and the seventh floor of Daimaru 11AM-9PM. For Korean BBQ, check the Green Mall area.
Karato Ichiba Fish Market
Tons of fresh seafood — not only fugu. There are some fabulous sushi bars upstairs and a lawn on the roof to relax on. Get there early in the morning for the best selection of sushi/sashimi on the market floor — buses run from JR Shimonoseki Station beginning at 5:55AM weekdays.
Midrange
Shunraku
Among the more affordable places for sit-down fugu, with nice mini-sets from ¥3800, and plenty of udon, tempura, and sushi dishes in the ¥2000 range for your friend who thinks you're nuts for wanting to eat a poisonous fish.
Kanmon Wharf
There are almost two dozen restaurants and cafes on the first and second floors, with plenty of crab, sushi, and of course fugu, but also Korean food and okonomiyaki as well.
Taketsubo
This small, personable restaurant provides a kettle per table and invites diners to fry some tempura, with various spices on the side for dipping. The owner is a trained sommelier and will be keen to recommend a bottle of wine.
Top end
Kitagawa
A popular fugu restaurant since 1871 with locations in the Karato area 7-11 Nabe-cho, +81 083-232-3212 and a bit northeast, off Route 57 4-9 Akama-cho, +81 083-232-3211.
Shimonoseki Marine Hotel
The restaurants for Shimonoseki Marine Hotel and Shunpanro see Sleep are also acclaimed for their fugu.
Raku Raku-an
In the Chofu area, with lovely seasonal gardens. Specialty tofu sets from ¥2940; fugu sets start at ¥5775.
Yabure Kabure
Fugu in the boozing district — look for the big blue & white fugu head out front.
Shinoda
Locally-grown fruits and vegetables surround your fugu. The fugu mini kaiseki includes a pretty good amount of food for ¥5000, but if money is not an issue, deluxe sets run as high as ¥28,500.
Two fugu fans
The Japanese poet Yosa Buson 1716-1783 wrote a famous senryū about forbidden love and the forbidden fish:I cannot see her tonight.I have to give her up.So I will eat fugu. Over two centuries later, the American poet Homer Simpson also imparted a profound truth about fugu: it is wiser to wait until the master chef is done making out with Mrs. Krabappel in the parking lot, rather than pressuring the chef's untrained assistant to prepare your fugu, which will cause you to spend the next 24 hours waiting for your heart to explode.
Even if you don't usually eat seafood, you may want to make an exception for Shimonoseki's most famous dish: fugu ãµã pronounced "fuku" locally. While the flesh and skin are often completely harmless, the internal organs of some species of pufferfish pack enough lethal toxins to paralyze every muscle in the human body. "Fugu" is a generic term that covers many types of pufferfish; Torafugu Tiger puffer, arguably the most popular type, has extraordinarily poisonous livers, ovaries, and intestines that must be carefully removed before preparation.
In order to serve fugu, chefs must be specially licensed, which entails several years of apprenticeship and a rigorous exam that sees a 70% failure rate. These steps ensure that fugu fatalities at restaurants are virtually unheard of. The city maintains a list of restaurants licensed to serve it (http://www.fuku.com/ryori.html).
The most popular form is fugu sashimi, thinly sliced. But it can also be served as part of a salad yubiki, a stew fugu-chiri, fried with hot sake fugu hire-zake, or deep fried fugu-kara-age. Most restaurants serving the dish will be pricey, but set meals with a bit of fugu can be had near the Kanmon Wharf or Karato Pier for ¥1100 or so.
Some people are underwhelmed by the taste of fugu — the flavor is more subtle than that of more oily fish like maguro tuna, but it has a distinctive taste that keeps aficionados coming back for more than just thrills. A few diners report their lips, tongues, or even fingertips tingling while eating fugu a condition referred to as shibireru, supposedly the result of chefs leaving trace amounts of the toxin on the fish. But given the legal ramifications of an even accidental poisoning, many dismiss the sensation as urban legend, all in the diners' imagination.
The other infamous local specialty is whale 鯨 kujira, which tastes like fishy steak and is served both raw and cooked. Shimonoseki has been the base for some of Japan's controversial whaling expeditions.