One of my all-time favorite comfort foods is Okonomiyaki. For those of you unfamiliar with Okonomiyaki, I describe it as Japanese style pizza. The basic ingredients are flour, dashi, egg and lots of shredded cabbage. You can throw in pork, bacon, seafood, mushrooms, onions, cheese or even mochi. Appropriately, okonomiyaki literally means “cook as you like.”

Everybody’s recipe seems to have a variation, but there are basically two styles—Osaka style and Hiroshima style. In Osaka style, everything is mixed together in a batter before throwing it on the grill. In Hiroshima style, ingredients are layered, and the layers usually include yakisoba noodles and a fried egg.

The pancakes are topped off with okonimyaki sauce, Kewpie mayonnaise (if it’s not Kewpie, forget it), nori (shredded seaweed) and katsuo boshi (bonito flakes).

Okonomiyaki is a great festival fare and I am in complete awe when I watch vendors cooking okonomiyaki 25 at a time.  Watching them crack all those eggs without getting any shells in is especially awe-inducing. I have watched street vendors in person and a few on youtube videos, and just like the name “okonomiyaki” implies, it seems that no two street vendors have the same method of making them.  For instance, this guy starts with a huge okonomiyaki pancake “sheet” (and a whole lot of cabbage) which I’ve never seen before.

I like to host okonomiyaki parties and let people cook their own pancakes at the table on those portable non-stick grills. (I love parties where my guests do all the work!) These are a couple of pics from past parties:

One of the cast members of “Letters from Iwo Jima,” Tsuyoshi Ihara (who played Baron Nishi) is not only a talented and handsome actor, but the owner of an Okonomiyaki restaurant chain in Japan. The restaurant chain is called “Gottsui”. So if you ever get a chance to go to Japan, check it out. (And don’t worry, they’ll cook the food for you.)

Unfortunately, their website is only in Japanese, but I love how the storefronts have that old 18th century Japan feel to them.  Definitely delicious and worth visiting.