What you can eat in Japan - Okonomi-yaki (Japanese savoury pancake)

If you are in Japan, especially in Osaka, you got to eat Okonomi-yaki. This is a Japanese savoury pancake, literally meaning 'cooked what you like' and is made of batter with flour, grated yam, dashi (Japanese soup stock), eggs and shredded cabbage, and you add extra ingredients such as meat, seafood, vegetables or cheese. Most of Okonomi-yaki restaurant has a cook who prepares the dish in front of you on a hot plate. Once ready, you eat it with Okonomi-yaki sauce (a bit like brown sauce but more sweater, saltier and thicker), green seaweed flakes, bonito flakes and Japanese mayonnaise.

We went to Botejyu in Umeda, which is a chain Okonomi-yaki restaurant.

Customers sit at counters watching a cook preparing Okonomi-yaki on hot plate.

In Japan most of restaurants have show-windows displaying plastic models of foods they serve, which look real, and inside of the restaurant menus often have pictures of foods they serve too, so if you don't understand Japanese, all you got to do is to point at a picture of what you fancy and you never go starve, ha ha ha!

So we sat at the counter. Wow, it was really hot sitting there as you got the heat off the hot plate right in front of you.

As we were taking pictures, the cook was busily preparing out food, mumbling to himself in Japanese, "Oh no, I am feeling pressure here ....".

The cook mixing all the ingredients throughly before pouring onto the hot plate.

Okonomi-yaki mix with lots of vegetables...

Checking orders for other customers too.

Preparing fried noodles to add to Okonomi-yaki for other customers....

He then put whatever extra ingredients you want from the menu. Emily, Maria and my sister opted for pork and bacon whilst I decided to try oysters as they were in the season in winter. and it was on their special menu.

Three Okonomi-yaki with pork and bacon in the front
and my oyster one is in the back being cooked on the hot plate.

Whilst we were waiting we had grilled aubergine slices with say sauce and mustard.

As Okonomi-yaki was getting ready, the cook put a lid over the okonomi-yaki to trap the heat and to ensure it would cook thoroughly, not just the top and bottom but middle too.
They were almost ready!  He then clean the hot plate to get ready for more orders for other customers.

Bowls of Okonomi-yaki mix are waiting to be grilled on the hot plate....

Once ready, you then add tasty Okonomi-yaki sauce, mayonnaise, green seaweed flakes and bonito flakes.

You then eat it with this steel spatula to slice the Okonomi-yaki in bite sizes.

If you wish to recreate this dish (but it would not be the same as you can't get the suitable type of potato here such as yama-imo, a bit like yam), you can try using the following ingredients for mix and cook it using a frying pan.

1 egg
50g plain flour
50g stock, cooled (or ideally Japanese dashi stock if you can buy it)
125g cabbage, thinly shredded
15g grated raw potato (though you could cook them to mash to give a softer consistency)
spring onions, chopped

You can go to a Chinese supermarket (unless you can go to a Japanese store) and buy okonomi-yaki sauce, if not you may try HP sauce mixing with Japanese soy sauce. Some Chinese shops may also sell Okonomi-yaki mix too if you want just adding extra ingredients to it.

Mmmmm, I may go to a Chinese supermarket this afternoon to see if I could buy some mix and make this at home for dinner.

That's all forks.