Sadly, "Nagoya cuisine" basically amounts to "deep fry it and put miso on it," but there is good food to be found!
For the real Nagoya experience, you have to go to Yamachan for chicken wings, although Furaibo (who Yamachan stole the recipe from) is a bit better in my book. Both are chains, and both are more noisy izakaya than nice meal with family, but still good stuff. For your fried pork with miso needs, the other Nagoya biggie is Yabaton.
Hitsumabushi is also big in Nagoya, and there are lots of restaurants that serve it (Maruya is a good reasonably-priced chain place), and in fact it's fairly hard to find a
bad version, but I like
Nishimoto near Morishita station. (I thought I
hated eel until I had good hitsumabushi. Turns out the stuff you get from the supermarket is in fact pretty bad, and it's worth it to pay a little extra.)
Also misonikomi udon (or kishimen) - again, lots and lots of restaurants but
Gyukoro near Shigahondori is real good. Right nearby is
Okada Ramen for a really good bowl of Taiwan ramen (and also very very good fried chicken). (Both of these are in my neighborhood which is why they get a shoutout, heh.)
It's a chain restaurant across Japan, but I always like to recommend
Ume no hana for a slightly fancy tofu-centric sit-down set meal.
