Osaka (and Hiroshima), Japan
Okonomiyaki
Cabbage-and-batter pancake griddled at the table, topped with sweet-savoury sauce, mayo, bonito flakes, and seaweed — Osaka or Hiroshima, two different dishes by the same name.
Okonomi means as you like.
The name translates roughly to "grilled as you like it." The base is dashi-and-flour batter mixed with shredded cabbage; from there, the eater picks the additions — pork belly, prawns, octopus, mochi, cheese, kimchi. Each regional and household version is its own dish. The unifying element is the four-topping finish: okonomi sauce, Japanese mayo, *aonori* powder, dancing *katsuobushi* (bonito) flakes.
4 · Plate
Osaka (and Hiroshima), Japan
Okonomiyaki
Cabbage-and-batter pancake griddled at the table, topped with sweet-savoury sauce, mayo, bonito flakes, and seaweed — Osaka or Hiroshima, two different dishes by the same name.
The Osaka working-class dish that became a Japanese institution. Okonomiyaki has roots in Funoyaki — a thin Edo-period crepe with miso — but the modern form, with cabbage as the bulk ingredient and a sweet-brown finishing sauce, was a postwar invention when rice rationing pushed cooks to find a wheat-based meal that felt substantial. Osaka’s konamon (flour-based dishes) tradition — including takoyaki, kushikatsu, and udon — comes from this same era.
The dish exists in a third regional form too: Tokyo monjayaki, which keeps the okonomi-yaki ingredients but uses far more liquid and cooks the result into a runny, hot-griddle-skim that the eater scrapes off with a tiny spatula and eats directly from the iron. Tokyo doesn’t pretend it’s the same dish; monjayaki is its own category.
Osaka mixes, Hiroshima layers.
Osaka-style: all ingredients folded into the batter, poured onto the griddle as a single pancake. Hiroshima-style: each layer cooked separately on the griddle — thin crepe, cabbage mountain, pork, noodles, egg — then stacked and pressed. They're fundamentally different dishes. Both call themselves okonomiyaki and both regions will tell you the other is wrong.