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.
