Okonomiyaki: Whatever You Like...Grilled!™

Imagine, if you would, a random assortment of American foods. Let’s say a cheeseburger, a thanksgiving turkey, a short stack of pancakes, a club sandwich and a deep-dish pizza. Okay, now imagine that I stack all of those foods up on a grill, somehow flatten them into an easily edible disc shape and then cook it up. What would you say to that? Why, you’d probably say, “Wow Mehan, that sounds awesome, too bad such a thing doesn’t exist!” Well my patriotic brother or sister, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I must inform you of yet another way that Japan lords her technological superiority over us: okonomiyaki.

With a name that literally translates into something that sounds more like a slogan than a food (“Things that you like, grilled”), okonomiyaki just might be that mythical food that has something for everyone. Or, in the eternal words of old Ludwig van:

You know, I was completely unaware that they even had okonomiyaki in 18th century Vienna but since I generally don’t question the veracity of information that I see written on random signs posted on the street, you’ll have to accept the above quote as authentic. Anyhow, okonomiyaki, sometimes referred to as “Japanese pizza” or “Japanese pancake” is essentially a flat, omelet-style dish, cooked on an open grill. The base of the dish is a pancake-like batter which is topped with any number of ingredients spanning the gamut of Japanese cuisine; noodles, vegetables (cabbage, bean sprouts, various kinds of onions), seafood (squid, shrimp, octopus), meat (bacon, pork), cheese, eggs, kimchee and mochi are all common. After it has been cooked, the 'yaki is generally topped with takoyaki sauce, mayonnaise, ginger, katsuobushi (fish flakes) and nori (dried seaweed). Okonomiyaki recipes vary greatly from region to region and some restaurants will now provide you with base ingredients and allow you to make your own okonomiyaki at your table (Japan has somewhat recently adopted Korea’s infatuation with cooking at restaurants).

Well, no trip to Hiroshima is complete without sampling the local variety of okonomiyaki, sometimes called “Hiroshima-yaki”. Okonomiyaki was supposedly invented in the city and just about any Hiroshiman will tell you that the local method of making the dish (layering the ingredients instead of mixing them, using yakisoba noodles) is the only way. While okonomiyaki is available all over Hiroshima, there’s one location generally agreed upon as the place to go: Okonomimura. Spanning three floors and featuring over 25 different okonomiyaki restaurants, Okonomimura is Hiroshima’s proudest gastronomical showcase.

Having no idea what differentiated the various booths, we simply walked into the first one that we were ushered into (by a lady who confidently assured us that the food contained within was oishii). While the menu allowed you to choose your own ingredients (most okonomiyaki shops do), we all opted for a pre-set variety featuring squid, octopus, pork, sprouts, cabbage, cheese, a fried egg, spicy soba noodles and about a million other things that I can’t remember.
Here’s what it looks like when it’s almost done. All that’s left is to melt the cheese on top.
Voila! When the okonomiyaki is finished, it’s simply pushed to the edge of the grill where the customer cuts slices with the provided metal spatula and serves them on to his or her plate. As you can see, we all ordered the same thing except for Megan, who was trying to prove that she’s not a conformist or something, I guess. By the way, okonomiyaki, especially the Hiroshima variant, is all kinds of delicious.