Toppings!

 

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What is Okonomiyaki?

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese dish, sometimes referred to as a “Japanese-Pizza“. There are many regional varieties, but they all follow the same base of ingredients:

1) Wheat flour-based batter, 2) Cabbage, and 3) Egg, and 4) Pork, and  5) A Tangy Sauce.

From here, the ingredients vary, depending on the chef’s preferences, and your own personal taste. This is what makes it true to its Japanese name, お好み(okonomi)　＋　焼き(yaki)　which is literally “choice” + “grilled” This is often translated to “cooked as you like”, or “what you like, grilled”, or something similar. The two most well-known versions of okonomiyaki are Osaka(Kansai)-style and Hiroshima-style.  

 

Osaka-Style Okonomiyaki

 

 

The easiest way to explain it is, the Kansai-style is like a cabbage pancake. The ingredients are mixed into the batter, topped with your choice of ingredients, plus sauce. Hiroshima-style ingredients are layered like a lasagna, onto a crepe-like base, and then topped with your choice of ingredients, plus sauce. Both are grilled on a teppan, or iron flat-grill, and eaten with a metal spatula, called a hera or kote. One distinct flavour difference between the two, is the use of beni-shouga, which is red, pickled ginger, in the Osaka variety. Hiroshima-style uses much more cabbage(3 or 4 times) and is generally much bigger, as it is most often eaten on a bed of soba or udon noodles.

Hiroshima-Style Okonomiyaki

 

 

 I’ll go into more details in the sections to come.

 

Hello Friends!

Konnichiwa!

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This is a blog dedicated to anything okonomiyaki-related. It is going to focus on the world of Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki. I first tried Kansai-style okonomiyaki back in 2001, finding comfort at a nice local okonomiyaki shop in Makino. I first thought of it as breakfast fare; it was the only thing I could find that was comparable to a standard bacon,egg, home-fry breakie back home. Though I love Japanese food, sometimes the rice and miso soup breakfast just didn’t cut it. The day I discovered this, my life in Japan changed. Okonomiyaki was new, but made me feel at home. 

I moved to Hiroshima in 2005, and was even more amazed and delighted by okonomiyaki culture the second time ’round. People hitting up the oko joints after work, slaking their post-12-hour-work-a-day thirsts with a mug of beer. Quiet solo diners, packs of kids, reading manga, waiting for their pies. Red-faced boozy teens and twenties scarfing down the eggy-noodles in the wee hours. Slack-jawed, business men inhaling hot cabbage and sauce by the shovel-full,  and well-postured hipster connoisseurs, sipping draught beer, watching steam rise from the grill. 

These sightings alone, were more than enough to pique my interest, but to make the whole thing even more interesting, I discovered that each region had its own style, sauce, and flavour. Though dishes of the same name are also well-known in Osaka, Kobe, and Tokyo, Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki is most complex… die-hard Hiroshima-yaki fans know that there is an specific order of operations to follow – from the crepe-like base to the last sprinkle of nori. And there seems to be as many great shops as there are fans, so really, the only thing to do is find the best place for yourself.

As an aside, I am also a dabbler in design arts, drawing etc., so I decided to make this site based on two of my favourite things: Okonomiyaki and Art. 

 

Night at Marumen

 

Bon Appetit! よろしくお願いします！

Emmie