Main Variations There are two significantly different types of Okonomiyaki. First, the Kansai or Osaka style, in which the ingredients are all mixed into a batter and then grilled. Second, the Hiroshima style, in which a small crepe-like pancake is grilled and then other ingredients are layered on top.

The Hioshima style uses much more cabbage than the Osaka style. All the ingredients are mixed into a batter which is grilled on both sides and then has various topping added. At some restaurants this is just served up, with a couple variations to choose from, sometimes grilled in a huge sheet and an individual portion cut out, and you add your own condiments.

At other restaurants you choose exactly the ingredients you want and the Okonomiyaki is cooked right in front of you, either by the chef or by yourself. The present Okonomiyaki that the Japanese have today was not born immediately after the war. However, it was gradually completed as the economy developed after the war. It is wheat flour melted in water and grilled with green onions.

In the latter half of , when supplies were scarce, the US military distributed rice flour to overcome food shortages. The Hiroshima-style was then born in Hiroshima prefecture. It is because it occurs after the dropping of the bomb in Hiroshima so the postwar reconstruction progresses at that time.

Additionally, during those times, many women start an okonomiyaki restaurant using the corner part of their houses. This is because one wife who lost her husband in the war started an okonomiyaki restaurant for a living. Hence, she gave the restaurant a name with the name of her late husband. The Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki recipe typically has ingredients of batter, cabbage, pork, and optional items such as squid, octopus, and cheese.

Due to food conditions after the war, locals change the green onions, which are seasonal, to cabbage, which is cheap and easy to obtain throughout the year. In the 30s of the Showa era, the start of the introduction of soba Chinese noodles and udon noodles.

The release of instant noodles at that time also influenced it. Hence, rice was still precious at that time. Originally, it was only a snack, but it changed into a staple food. Dissolve the okonomiyaki flour in a bowl. Add oil to a hot plate and spread the mixed dough thinly and roundly.

Put a heap of cabbage on it, and put bean sprouts on it. After putting the bean sprouts on it, flatten it to make it easier to put the tenkasu on it.

Place the pork belly one by one so that it does not overlap. You can also add salt and pepper according to your taste. Sprinkle some dough on top. When the dough turns golden brown, turn it over and turn it over for about 5 minutes. In the meantime, bake yakisoba next to it. On the other hand, Kansai-style okonomiyaki and Tokyo-style monjayaki are cooked by mixing all ingredients together.

Therefore, many restaurants serving them often ask customers to cook their own foods on the griddle at the table. You are of course welcome to try making this popular Japanese food by yourself as part of your experience of Japanese culture. However, if you don't feel comfortable cooking by yourself, ask servers if they can prepare the dish for you instead. Takoyaki is a ball-shaped pancake that is believed to have originated in Osaka.

Each ball is about 3 to 5 cm in diameter and contains a piece of octopus meat in its center. Other common ingredients used for takoyaki are tenkasu tempura crumbs , negi onion, and benishoga red pickled ginger.

Ideal takoyaki has a lightly-crusty outer surface with inside that is soft and runny like monjayaki. Takoyaki is usually topped with sweet and salty sauce and is sprinkled with aonori green seaweed and katsuobushi dried bonito flakes. Some people like to add mayonnaise on it. As a variant of okonomiyaki, monjayaki is very popular in Tokyo.

The okonomiyaki which includes raw squid is distinctly described as 'nama ika' raw squid in a menu. Also in the well-established shops in Mihara City, 'ika furai' which fries noshiika flattened dried cuttlefish is often called ' noshiika ' to distinguish it from 'nama ika.

After frying noodles for yakisoba or noodles such as udon and so on with a slightly salty taste, they are often incorporated to okonomiyaki and grilled up. Except in the Hiroshima region, in order to distinguish the okonomiyaki including these noodles from Kansaifu-okonomiyaki, it is generally called 'hiroshimayaki' Hiroshima-style savory pancake with various ingredients but people in Hiroshima never use this word. They call it okonomiyaki simply or Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki and even if you say hiroshimayaki, they do not understand it at once.

On the contrary, except in Hiroshima, Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki often refers to the one that literally incorporates the Hiroshima style and where the dough is thick or the one which is similar to 'hiroshimafu-okonomi pizza' Hiroshima-style savory pancake with various ingredients and many people in Hiroshima are disappointed. Also, the word 'modanyaki' thin and flat pancake cooked on a hot plate with pieces of meat, seafood and chopped cabbage in Kansai style including soba does not make sense in Hiroshima at all.

However, in Mihara City, Hiroshima Prefecture, some shops call Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki, which includes soba or udon, modanyaki. The choice between soba Chinese noodles and udon depends on individual tastes, but in general soba is thinner and has lower water content and so the texture becomes crisp and fragrant.

Udon has a sticky texture and higher water content and so, if those who are not good at cooking grill it, the finished one tends to be watery. To put it the other way around, while the one containing soba can be grilled well to some degree by anybody, those who can grill the one containing udon well are very good cooks and so you can guess the level of cooking skills of the okonomiyaki shops to some degree by ordering the one that includes udon.

The taste is a bit sweet. And some shops use the sauces of the other local manufacturers such as Carp Sauce a brand of oyster sauce a bit spicy , Mitsuwa sauce a brand of oyster sauce of Sunfoods Co. The way to see what kind of the sauce is used in the shops is chiefly to check the noren a short -split- curtain hung at the entrance of a room put at the entrance of the shops because these sauce companies make the noren with their name printed on it and provide the shops which buy the sauce with it.

Recently many shops set up a nobori flag, banner, streamer too and so it is easy to check. And the instruments, such as spatulas used when eating okonomiyaki, also have the company name on them.

Especially in Hiroshima City there are lots of small-scale shops because they were supported by these sauce companies to open the shops after the war and thus 'housewives in the neighborhood' could open the shops at a low price as a kind of part-time job after refurbishing some parts of their houses.

When the sauce for okonomiyaki was first produced or by what company, is not altogether clear. Higashimaru sauce a brand of oyster sauce or Mitsuwa sauce or Carp Sauce first produced the sauce. Hiroshima prefecture was the original area producing vinegar and they could apply the technique to the production of the sauce, which, they think, led to the prosperity of the sauce manufacturers and played a role for the spread of okonomiyaki.

In Osaka many shops use mayonnaise while in Kobe which sticks to the traditional okonomiyaki many shops do not have mayonnaise and even if they have it, it is not often served unless someone specifically orders it and it's the same in Hiroshima. The shops that put self-service mayonnaise on the table have increased even in the okonomiyaki shops, but even now, depending upon the shops, it is sometimes necessary to pay an extra fee for it and in this case, for example, individually-packaged mayonnaise sticks are served.

Recently in the shops for young people, the mayonnaise is put on when served, but, depending upon the preference or age group, many people do not like it. However, now the young people who put mayonnaise on every type of food, called mayorar mayonnaise addict , have increased and there is TV influence across Japan and the takoyaki octopus dumplings of rotensho stallholder includes mayonnaise on, and there is no conclusive theory. How to order. The menus in the shops in Hiroshima have descriptions such as okonomiyaki, soba udon , niku meat and tamago egg , but the customers order without saying all of them, but saying 'niku, tama, soba udon iri included ,' 'soba udon and niku tama' as for tamago, they do not say tamago but 'tama' , 'soba udon and niku ikaten.

And sometimes the W is written under soba udon , which means double soba udon or two packs two tama. It is not recommended for small eaters because of the volume. When you order 'chanpon,' the okonomiyaki which includes both soba and udon one-by-one is served. It is also called Mix-Double. In Hiroshima Prefecture, you can order take out and it is put in the styrol box. Then you have to pay about 50 yen extra, the cost of the container.

If you call some shops in advance, you can order take out and you won't have to wait for it. How to eat. As for Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki, the spatulas are used when eating. Every okonomiyaki shop in Hiroshima in past times was small-scale, cramped and narrow see the reason in the section 'Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki sauce'. There were narrow shops with no seats except around the iron plate and the customers ate from the iron plate using spatulas. In the earliest days of okonomiykaki, wooden chopsticks were used, but they were expensive and were replaced with the spatulas and the customers were delighted with them.

And as another reason, the shops that were originally food stalls make the customers eat it on the iron plate so it was not necessary for the shops to wash dishes because traditionally the shops had cut down the water used for washing the dishes.

Recently large-scale shops have increased and the tables and seats have also increased and the customers need to acquire the knack for using the spatulas when eating and the tourists from the other regions have also increased, and thus many shops have served chopsticks.

Just before grilling it up, many shops ask the customers whether they want to eat from 'the iron plate' using spatulas or from 'a dish' using chopsticks. Some recommend that Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki should be eaten from an 'iron plate' because it is hot and delicious and has a unique stratified structure and the customers can enjoy it at one bite, and others say that eating it with spatulas smells like iron, which means there are good or bad points.

In Kansaifu-okonomiyaki, the majority eat it using small spatulas, but some eat using chopsticks. There are some shops where there is an explanatory description 'eating with chopsticks' Tsuruhashi Fugetsu Japanese-style pancake restaurant and others where spatulas are recommended.

Area differences Also in Hiroshima Prefecture, the way of cooking varies from one area to another. In the east areas of Hiroshima Prefecture Bingo Province which is near the prefecture's border with Okayama Prefecture such as Fukuyama City and so on, there are many Kansaifu-okonomiyaki shops because of the vicinity to the Kinki region such as Hyogo Prefecture.

In the Bingo Province area where Kansaifu-okonomiyaki was originally mainstream, Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki later became widespread. And in this area some shops add eccentric ingredients. Before on the cookery program, Chizuru AZUMA from Innoshima City, adding konjac alimentary yam paste in okonomiyaki, said 'in Hiroshima it is added,' but only in this area.

In Fuchu City Hiroshima Prefecture , ground meat or minced meat are added instead of pork back ribs and it is called ' Fuchu yaki' Japanese pancake. Many local mothers worked for the manufactures of furniture or paulownia boxes which were the local industry and their children ate okonomiyaki as a snack or supper and in order for the children to be able to buy it with their pocket money, cheap minced pork and beef began to be used instead of pork ribs.

If minced meats are cooked well, the soup stock exudes, the taste increases, the fat also exudes a lot and characteristically the noodles are fried crisply. In order for as many okonomiyaki to be grilled as possible on a narrow iron plate, their shape is elliptical. And in Onomichi City some shops add gizzards and in Kure City many shops add udon.

Culture in Hiroshima. Okonomiyaki can be cooked on a hot plate in the household, however, compared to Kansaifu-okonomiyaki which is popular as a common home-cooked meal in the Kansai region, Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki is oriented to be 'professionally cooked' or 'eaten in specialty shops.

In Hiroshima there are few shops which are half self-service like Kansaifu-okonomiyaki shops, but mostly the shop staff cooks from start to finish and the finished one is served to the customer. Formerly in the shops it was usually eaten in the daytime and not after dusk or at night. This seems to be because the students often ate it at the shops after school was over in half a day on Saturdays. At night the okonomiyaki shops in town are quiet and close relatively early.

Also, this influenced from many housewives who had operated the shop business as an additional job, as mentioned before. That is, many okonomiyaki shops were operated in the daytime when family members were not at home, where husbands worked in a company outside and wives ran the okonomiyaki shops. Nowadays, large-scale okonomiyaki shops have opened and such small-scale shops have disappeared. When the sightseeing tours such as school trips go to Hiroshima City, 'okonomi mura' okonomiyaki village is included in the itinerary and so on, which is roaring even at night as a tourist site in the central part of the city.

Though people from Hiroshima Prefecture live in Tokyo and say 'Let's eat okonomiyaki' to their colleagues at lunch time, they do not agree with them, saying 'it is unusual to eat okonomiyaki in the daytime. The difference between the professional and household processes. Those who are good at cooking may try to cook it at home, but the heat of hot plates on shelves and common stove burners may not be hot enough. Normally it is desirable to prepare burners for the professional shops, but in ordinary households, it is desirable to prepare more than two stove burners if possible, four stove burners and an iron plate which can cover them at one stretch one used for barbeque and when camping is OK.

Naturally, you have to be careful about ventilation. Spatulas sold in home centers are indispensable for cooking using turners, it is highly possible to fail. The method of straddling and using a portable gas burner should be absolutely avoided because of the safety hazards. And the way of cooking by the IH heater in an all-electric home has not been established yet. The others. As mentioned before, shops that prepare mayonnaise in are on the increase, but basically the seasonings on the table in the iron-plate-only shops, beside the iron plate are the sauces only.

However, among them, some shops prepare pepper white peppers , cayenne pepper powder, shichimi togarashi a mixture of red cayenne pepper and other aromatic spices or garlic powder.

As Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki covers the taste sufficiently only with the sweetness of cabbages, unlike Kansaifu-okonomiyaki they do not mix the dashi broth soup in the dough fish powder is sometimes strewn on the dough , is rarely strewn with sliced dried bonito and dried bonito shavings because they are not often put on the table. As for beni-shoga there are arguments for and against it, but in the shops except for those in Hiroshima Prefecture, Hiroshimafu-okonomiyaki often has beni-shoga included.

Tohoku region. In Iwate Prefecture, they mix the ingredients with the dough, grill it very thinly, put a large sheet of dried laver seaweed on it, coat it with soy sauce and eat it, which is called dondonyaki. The ingredients include sakura shrimp Sergia lucens , green onion and so on, which is relatively few.

In the food stalls, the dondon-yaki is sold by putting it between kyogis paper-thin sheet of wood. It is classified as okonomiyaki due to the ingredients and the way of cooking, but the texture and taste are similar to isobe-yaki grilled food wrapped in nori. An iron plate is installed at each table and in many shops the customers grill by themselves. Compared with Kansaifu-okonomiyaki, it has more amounts of "thickener" such as flour and so on.

The way of cutting is not in sainome diced or Kansai style, but often in a radial fashion like cutting a 'pizza. Around Tsukishima around , there were about five monjayaki shops. Now the toppings have lots of varieties such as cheese, mochi , mentaiko salted cod roe spiced with red pepper , the toppings for pizza and so on.

As for the topping sauce, the shops have used medium thick sauce from long ago, but ketchup or mayonnaise were also used in the household from long ago. Formerly sakura shrimp, sliced squid, yakisoba and beni-shoga , which are almost the same ingredients as monjayaki, are regularly used, but now countless kinds of ingredients are used.