Tonight I ended up with some old-fashioned Osaka flavour, courtesy of a trip to a little restaurant near my friend’s place in Minami-Azabu. Bochibochi is an okonomiyaki chain that bills itself as “The flavour of downtown Osaka”. Well, we certainly had the flavour and I’ve had to loosen my belt 3 notches to accomodate it.

For those unaware, okonomiyaki is essentially shredded cabbage that has been mixed with a bit of savoury batter and cooked on a griddle-plate. Additional things are added like meat or vegetables, a little more batter is slopped on and the whole thing is then flipped. It’s kind of a like a pancake with “bits” in it. And the “bits” can vary wildly – pork, cheese, natto, prawns, tuna. The whole thing is doused in mayonnaise (Japanese kewpie mayonnaise, naturally) and sticky okonomiyaki sauce, sprinkled with bonito flakes (which shrivel from the heat and move and undulate whilst they do) and hacked up into chunks for you to eat. Sometimes at an okonomiyaki place they cook it for you, sometimes they give you the bits and you do it yourself.

We ended up seated at the counter (where we could watch them cook our food) and ordering some yakisoba with pork and onions, okonomiyaki with cheese, bacon, mochi and garlic chips, and we also asked the guys behind the counter for their recommendation (always an interesting prospect).

The beer was awesome – it arrived in frozen, frosty mugs and whilst we waited we noticed that every order and every entry of new customers was acknowledged by the en masse shouting of “Irasshaimase!!” and the like – it got to be ridiculous when we noticed that some of the guys were just calling out “Uwah!” rather than any sensical words. But the atmosphere was lively and a nice change in comparison to a staid izakaya or bar. 

 

Cheese-Bacon-Chicken-Garlic Okonomiyaki      Rocking the Grill at Pochi Pochi 

The portions were ridiculous. A single serve could easily satiate two people, or maybe one really hungry person who can expand their stomach without pain. Despite this, we ploughed on and vowed to avoid any form of transport that wasn’t powered by our own two feet for the next 3 weeks – a glutton’s empty penance.

The food was fantastic – the cabbage wasn’t too wilted, the sauce and filling was light enough that you didn’t get the doughy sensation of “cabbage filed pancake” that you get with some okonomiyaki and the combination of cheese on one side, bacon on the other with the mochi and other fillings in the middle was absolutely delicious – definitely up there on the decadance scale with something like cheese & bacon niku-gushi.

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