Okonomiyaki in Osaka, or, How Not To Give Your Server A Heart Attack

when in Osaka, one of the must-try foods, “they” say (and i agree), is okonomiyaki, a grilled scramble of all sorts of goodies, often topped with mayo and a savory sauce. SO GOOD. on my last trip to the area three years ago, i had it at a small shop (Okonomiyaki Chitose) where the chef cooked it in front of me.

tonight, with my parents in tow, we went to Dotonbori, a glitzy commercial center of Osaka because i didn’t visit in 2011 and i really wanted to see the Glico Man*. we hadn’t really eaten lunch since we were in transit from Takayama without time to grab some ekiben, but thanks to Foursquare i saw there was a highly-rated restaurant in the area: Ajinoya.

* the Glico Man is not visible 🙁

I came all this way to see the famous Glico sign but it's covered up, I think because it's being converted to LEDs 🙁 pic.twitter.com/3KPksOFxoc

— Jonathan Khoo (@jonk) October 11, 2014

imagine my surprise (a satisfying surprise, mind you), when i saw the line in front (though to be fair, many places in Dotonbori have lines).

we ended up waiting for about 45 minutes at around 6:30 at night, spending the time trying to decipher the menu (which a guy will hand out).

for the three of us, we got Menu B (3350 yen, bottom picture, for two people) and an order of shrimp okonomiyaki (top left of the white menu, 840 yen). as it turns out, they have an English menu available once you get inside. also, i am not sure why the bar was mostly empty, but maybe they only make a handful of seats available there. it’s a small restaurant and there aren’t many tables, hence the line.

if you’re seated at a table, there’s a teppan (a griddle) in the middle, already hot and ready to go.

(spoiler: DO NOT touch the large spatulas; those are pretty much for employee use only heh. use the smaller ones to cut and serve.)

several minutes after you place your order, someone will come by with bowls full of ingredients which she’ll mix to break up the eggs (which are not only tasty but help to bind the okonomiyaki together), and form pancakes on the griddle.

now, here’s the key. some dishes you can eat right away, some need to be left to cook. it’s best to clarify which are which, but we learned the hard way. the noodles, you can eat without waiting. the okonomiyaki, though, LEAVE ALONE.

my dad flipped the pancakes because we thought they were getting overly-done, but a server saw us and let out an audible scream. i’m sure if she actually caught my dad in the act, a slow-motion NOOOOOOOOOOOO would have played out. she was mortified and called over her boss (our main server) who stared, stunned, slack-jawed. long story short, she admonished us to NOT to touch anything unless she told us we could. (there are, though, okonomiyaki places where you cook yourself, but i’m not sure how to tell which are which.)

so yeah, no okonomiyaki just yet, but the noodles were good to go, as were the egg-wrapped taco-like things in the picture below (cooked by the man behind the bar).

the server came back around a couple minutes later to finish prepping our food — long squirts of mayo on top, then topping them all with the yummy savory brown sauce.

so yeah, they warn you not to touch the gas control for the teppan, but do they warn you not to touch the food? NO.

despite my dad’s potentially disastrous actions, she managed to salvage our dinner (*wink*) and it was quite delicious — worth the wait, in my opinion! all of the dishes we got were great, and if you’re in doubt, they have a list outside the front door of their top 5 dishes. what we ordered ended up being numbers 1 through 4, and i think you can’t go wrong with any of them. it was the perfect amount of food for the three of us. oh, they’re cash-only.

beware, though:

Almost at front of line. Restaurant has collection of when they were mentioned in print. This magazine hurts my eyes. pic.twitter.com/REc4UUQqSr

— Jonathan Khoo (@jonk) October 11, 2014