Okonomiyaki Yukari

his restaurant came well recommended, but was hard to find. It is located on the first floor of a building next to Tokyu Inn, Osaka, roughly opposite the Esaka subway station. It was well worth the search, though we had to ask the young crowd that hung outside the slot machine places for directions. I looked up Okonomiyaki cuisine on the internet. In Japan, two cities specialise in it. Hiroshima and Osaka.Okonomiyaki is a distinctive Japanese-style pizza. As the name indicates (Okonomi means favorites in Japanese), you can add desired ingredients in it. In Japan, there are mainly two areas where okonomiyaki is very popular: Osaka and Hiroshima. Okonomiyaki is cooked differently in the two regions.Both use plenty of chopped green cabbage as the basic ingredient. In Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, chopped cabbage is usually cooked on top of thinly spread batter with yakisoba noodles added. In Osaka-style Okonomiyaki, chopped green cabbage is mixed with the batter and cooked together. Different meats and sea food are added as per taste, as are corn, and bean sprouts. It is served with Okonomiyaki sauce,that tastes like terriyaki sauce, mayonnaise, and sometimes with toppings of green onion, pickled red ginger, and dried seaweed powder. The restaurant was minimalistic. Each table was fitted with a hotplate in its middle, and the temperature can be regulated by knobs at the side. The Okonomiyaki was cooked on the hotplate, in front of us. It can order a small, medium, or large size portions, and we ordered individual small portions- although we could have shared a large portion cheaper. The waitress brought small bowls filled with chopped cabbage, a raw egg,some sprouts and bits of the meats we had ordered- pork and shrimp. The bowl was upturned on the hotplate, and all the ingredients including hashed together with a blunt trowel-like instrument. The whole of the mix was next patted and shaped into neat round thick pancakes, about six inches in diameter and an inch thick, and allowed to cook for a good 5 minutes before being turned over. While the flipped side was getting cooked,a layer of mayonnaise and Okonomiyaki sauce was spread thin on the well-done side. After a further 5 minute cooking time, we were allowed to eat it with chopsticks. A glass of cold water was served free, but a chilled local beer was our choice. The entire meal was tasty, filling, satisfying, and only cost around 100 Yen per head.