Okonomiyaki

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Okonomiyaki is a Japanese savory pancake, and its name doubles as an instruction. Okonomi means "how you like" or "what you like", and yaki means grilled. Together the two words promise a dish cooked to the eater's own taste. That promise raises questions. How does a dish with such an open name end up with firm regional rules? Why do Hiroshima and the Kansai region each cook it in a way the other would hardly recognize? And what happens when cooks in a struggling city take the name literally, using whatever food they can find?

  269

• 2. Anatomy of a Plate

  ›

  On a teppan, a flat iron griddle, a wheat flour batter meets whatever the cook or the customer has chosen to add. Cabbage, meat and seafood are the usual choices. Some ingredients are mixed into the batter, and others are laid on top.

  The finished pancake is dressed with okonomiyaki sauce, which is made with Worcestershire sauce. Aonori, dried seaweed flakes, add green flecks, and katsuobushi, flakes of dried bonito, are scattered across the surface. Japanese mayonnaise and pickled ginger complete the plate.

  Japanese cooking has a word for dishes built on flour: konamono, or konamon in the Kansai dialect. Okonomiyaki is a standard example of the category. The dish also has a short name. Many people simply say okonomi, where the O is a politeness prefix and konomi means favorite.

  The dish is available throughout Japan, with batters and toppings changing from area to area. Two variants, one from Hiroshima and one from the Kansai region, set the standards. The Worcestershire in that sauce points to a Western influence that turns up again in Kyoto's story.

  2691013

• 3. Griddles and Hard Times

  ›

  Around the 16th century, the tea master Sen no Rikyū wrote about a thin, crepe-like confection called funoyaki. Its ingredients are unclear, though it may have included fu, which is wheat gluten. By the late Edo period, which ran from 1603 to 1867, funoyaki meant a thin crepe baked on a cooking pot, with miso brushed on one side.

  That sweet snack has living descendants. Kintsuba, called gintsuba in Kyoto and Osaka, and taiko-yaki, also known as imagawayaki, both use nerian, a sweet bean paste.

  In the Meiji era, which lasted from 1868 to 1912, children flocked to dagashiya, shops that sold cheap sweets, for a treat called monjiyaki. Cooks drew letters, known as monji, or pictures on a teppan using flour batter, then added ingredients of the customer's choice. It was also called dondonyaki, after the drums that stall sellers beat to attract customers.

  In Kyoto during the Taishō period, which ran from 1912 to 1926, a cheap Western-style cuisine called issen yōshoku took shape. It may have produced an early form of savory okonomiyaki: a pancake with Worcestershire sauce and chopped scallion.

  The word "okonomiyaki" itself first appeared at a shop in Osaka in the 1930s. After the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 left people short of amenities, cooking these crepes became a pastime. After World War II, when rice was scarce, okonomiyaki emerged as an inexpensive and filling meal for all ages, topped with meat, seafood and vegetables.

  This "okonomiyaki boom" made household equipment and ingredients for the dish commercially available. In Hiroshima, the postwar story took a harder turn.

  24531

• 4. Kansai Style

  ›

  The Kansai or Osaka style is the predominant version of the dish and is found across most of Japan. Its batter combines flour, grated nagaimo (a long type of yam), dashi or water, eggs and shredded cabbage. Green onion usually goes in as well, along with meat, most often thin slices of pork belly or American bacon.

  Octopus, squid, shrimp, vegetables, konjac, mochi and cheese are other common fillings. Diners compare the result to an omelette or a pancake. Nicknames include "Japanese pizza" and "Osaka soul food".

  Some restaurants prepare the mixture in advance and let customers fry it themselves on a teppan or a special hotplate. Others have a diner-style counter where the cook works in front of the customers. Either way, the pancake is fried on both sides, and the metal spatulas used to turn it later cut the finished dish into portions.

  A layer of fried noodles, either yakisoba or udon, turns the dish into modan-yaki. The name may come from the English word "modern". It may also be a contraction of mori dakusan, meaning "a lot" or "piled high", a nod to the volume of food.

  Negiyaki is a thinner relative made with a great deal of scallion. It resembles Korean pajeon and Chinese green onion pancakes.

  Local twists abound. Kishiwada, in Osaka, makes kashimin-yaki with chicken and tallow instead of pork. Hamamatsu mixes in takuan, which is pickled daikon. In Tokushima Prefecture, cooks stir in stewed sweet kintoki-mame.

  691326

• 5. Hiroshima Layers

  ›

  Hiroshima city has more than 2000 okonomiyaki restaurants, and the prefecture has more of them per capita than anywhere else in Japan. Before World War II, a thin pancake called issen yōshoku, literally "One-coin Western food", was already popular there. It was topped with green onions and either bonito flakes or shrimp.

  After the atomic bombing in August 1945, that pancake became a cheap way for surviving residents to eat. Because the original ingredients were hard to find, many street vendors and shops began cooking it to order with whatever they could get.

  The Hiroshima version layers its ingredients instead of mixing them. The usual stack is batter, cabbage, pork and yakisoba. Squid, octopus, other seafood, nori flakes or powder, mung bean sprouts, egg, chicken and cheese are optional, depending on the cook and the customer. Noodles, either yakisoba or udon, can also sit on top with a fried egg and plenty of okonomiyaki sauce.

  The cabbage is the striking part. Cooks use three to four times as much as in the Osaka style. It starts out piled very high and is pressed down as it softens.

  The style goes by two other names, Hiroshima-yaki and Hiroshima-okonomi. Around the city, nearby towns have put their own marks on it.

  7171819

• 6. Local Twists

  ›

  In Fuchū, Hiroshima, the local version called Fuchūyaki uses ground meat instead of pork belly. In Hinase, Okayama, cooks mix in oysters, called kaki, to make kaki-oko.

  On the island of Innoshima, a variety called Innoshima okonomiyaki, or in'oko for short, includes udon, bonito flakes, Worcestershire sauce and vegetables fried with uncooked batter. Together with Onomichiyaki, in'oko counts as a B-class gourmet food along the Shimanami Kaidō.

  One restaurant in Hiroshima takes the idea of choice further than most. Customers can order jalapeños, tortilla chips, chorizo and other Latin American items, either inside the pancake or on the side.

  Otafuku, one of the most popular brands of okonomiyaki sauce, is based in Hiroshima. The company runs an okonomiyaki museum and a cooking studio there. In an April 2004 poll, Okonomi-mura, in the Naka-ku ward of Hiroshima, ranked as the top food theme park destination for families in Japan.

  22172423

• 7. Tokyo and Beyond

  ›

  In Tokyo's Tsukishima district, the main street is named "Monja Street", and the neighborhood is popular for both okonomiyaki and monjayaki. Monjayaki, abbreviated as monja, is the liquid-based cousin of okonomiyaki, and Tokyo is where it is most popular.

  It grew out of the old monjiyaki of the dagashiya. Its batter is runnier because more water is added, which gives it a different consistency once cooked.

  In some areas of Kyoto city, a style called betayaki is served. It is built from layers of thin batter, shredded cabbage and meat, finished with a fried egg and noodles.

  Outside Japan, street vendors in Manila, Taipei, Bangkok and Jakarta sell okonomiyaki as popular street food.

  2627289