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Food, or, something more cheerful
Oct. 4th, 2005 02:45 pmThere's a cool article on okonomiyaki that BoingBoing linked to.
Okonomiyaki was my introduction to Japanese food when I was 17/18. There was a Japanese restaurant in town that we used to walk to from school (me and my three best friends) during our, er, double English period. It was a ton of fun mixing up the batter and the cabbage and the squid and octopus and frying it all up, and then slathering it with the yummy brown sauce, covering it with a drift of bonito and tea flakes, squirting a squiggle of Japanese mayo over the top, then noshing the whole thing down in 5 minutes flat. Truly interactive food.
Also, pretty amazing that there was a restaurant that served the stuff in the late 80s in Auckland, before the Asian influx. Once I had been converted, there was no looking back. At university (while I was there), I lived on Japanese takeaway bento boxes (bento might be a somewhat overgenerous name, but that's what the snack shop called them). Japanese-style potato salad or coleslaw, rice, something on top of the rice (like grilled fish, or teriyaki chicken, or beef curry (ick, I skipped those days)), all packed in a polystyrene takeaway box with miso soup in a cup on the side. $5. Yummo food.
The trouble with okonomiyaki is that it can be hard to track down. I found one place in London that did it. There isn't anywhere in Canberra that does (well, not that I've found yet). There is one (other) place in Auckland I know does; there may be more by now. One in Wellington. And guess what I'm craving now. I may just have to make my own, if I can find somewhere that sells bonito flakes.
Okonomiyaki may be the homeliest food in creation, a squat, unlovely, vaguely circular mess of batter, cabbage and egg, slicked with a tarry black substance made from catsup and Worcestershire sauce, inscribed with mayonnaise, and dusted with curls of shaved, dried bonito that shudder and writhe on top of the pancake like a thousand pencil shavings come to gruesome life. Okonomiyaki is simultaneously crisp and gooey, sweet and savory, bland and funky as hell. When you are presented with your first okonomiyaki, you don’t know whether to kill it or to eat it.
Okonomiyaki was my introduction to Japanese food when I was 17/18. There was a Japanese restaurant in town that we used to walk to from school (me and my three best friends) during our, er, double English period. It was a ton of fun mixing up the batter and the cabbage and the squid and octopus and frying it all up, and then slathering it with the yummy brown sauce, covering it with a drift of bonito and tea flakes, squirting a squiggle of Japanese mayo over the top, then noshing the whole thing down in 5 minutes flat. Truly interactive food.
Also, pretty amazing that there was a restaurant that served the stuff in the late 80s in Auckland, before the Asian influx. Once I had been converted, there was no looking back. At university (while I was there), I lived on Japanese takeaway bento boxes (bento might be a somewhat overgenerous name, but that's what the snack shop called them). Japanese-style potato salad or coleslaw, rice, something on top of the rice (like grilled fish, or teriyaki chicken, or beef curry (ick, I skipped those days)), all packed in a polystyrene takeaway box with miso soup in a cup on the side. $5. Yummo food.
The trouble with okonomiyaki is that it can be hard to track down. I found one place in London that did it. There isn't anywhere in Canberra that does (well, not that I've found yet). There is one (other) place in Auckland I know does; there may be more by now. One in Wellington. And guess what I'm craving now. I may just have to make my own, if I can find somewhere that sells bonito flakes.
