Okonomiyaki is a Japanese savoury pancake made from cabbage, meat and eggs and is widely found in the Kansai and Hiroshima areas. Although you can also find this dish in many izakayas as well as some Japanese restaurants in Tokyo, the standards are still very different. We chanced upon this restaurant on our last day before going to the airport and decided to pop in for a quick snack.
The restaurant itself is located on the 2nd storey of a building. In fact, I did not take any notice of the restaurant name since it was all in Japanese. I only found the name after a thorough search on google and google map thereafter.
The restaurant itself is pretty small but they still managed a row of window seats for the single diner
There is also normal group seating for groups and family
There is a huge hot plate right in the middle of the table and once you are seated, the server will turn on the power for the metal plate so it can get very hot. If you are with kids, do make sure they do not touch any parts of the metal plate
They have quite a variety of okonomiyaki to choose from; seafood, meat, egg, green onions, plain and more. They also have the yaki soba version which is the pancake made with noodles. There is also some teppanyaki items like fried vegetables which can be ordered
At the side of the table, there are pot covers, bonito flakes, salt, pepper, mayonnaise, okonomiyaki sauce as well as a sand timer.
This is the close up of the timer which is well needed to gauge the time to cook your okonomiyaki
The server will bring your okonomiyaki ingredients and mix it in front of you in a bowl. They will then place the ingredients down on the plate and give you instructions on how to cook it.
Before leaving you to cook your okonomiyaki, the server will cover up the pancake with the pot covers. When you lift the cover, the handle is also slightly hot and the hot steam that rises from the hot plate is also quite hot so do be careful
We ordered 3 different flavours, the first is this pork okonomiyaki with egg yolk and cheese.
The next is this prawn with cream cheese and mentaiko topping
Last is this general pork one which is the one you commonly find outside
This is a video of how the whole process looks like from the server mixing the ingredients to us cooking the okonomiyaki ourselves.
Overall, the food is ok although the ones I had in Osaka were still the best but I feel the experience itself is till quite interesting. Although our clothes did smell a little after the meal but I did enjoying cooking our own food and it was a fun experience.
Address: 3 Chome-34-15 Shinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 160-0022, Japan
Operating hours: 5 pm to 12 am ( Sat and Sun 12 pm to 12 am)
Bear Travels . Bear Eats . Bear Cooks 