Taste of Western Japan! Popular Spongy “Okonomiyaki” in Shinagawa

Walking for 3 minutes from Shinagawa station, Kounan exit, there is a office building surrounded by a huge glass walls.
Going up to the second floor.

There you are! The famous Okonomiyaki restaurant, “Kiji” is right there.
Okonomiyaki is a Japanese home meal dish, especially popular in west part of Japan, such as Osaka and Hiroshima.
It looks like a pancake, with lot of cabbage, vegetables, seafoods, cheese, bacon… but you can put anything you like.
And the special sauce, mayonnaise, and dried bonito shavings are put on top♡

It’s hard to imagine in head, but it taste amazingly good!
My friends in overseas always ask me to cook Okonomiyaki when I visit them!

Going back to Kiji, it gets very busy at lunchtime.
There is a long line and takes an hour to get a seat.
They don’t take a reservation.
So I decided to ask them on the phone how busy it is…
“There are only 3 couples waiting now”…!
That’s a good news, I don’t have to wait that long. Let’s go!

Lucky me♪
I didn’t even have to wait for a minute!
I could hear people chatting with mouthful of hot Okonomiyaki, saying “Yum, yum!!”.

We were guided to a table seat. Let’s have a look at the menu.

Lunch menus are only for weekdays so tat we have usual menus for weekends.
There are other menus such as beef tendon stew♪

Decided!
We ordered “Grilled Beef Tendon Okonomiyaki” with heaps of spring onions, and “Tomato Cheese Okonomiyaki” for this time!

They cook for us and bring them to the table.
I don’t have to worry the smell of Okonomiyaki gets my clothes.
Some restaurants have self-cooking style. It’s also enjoyable!
Grilled Beef Tendon Okonomiyaki has arrived after 15 minutes.

The tons of spring onions on the top are western style of Okonomiyaki.
Cut into pieces like a pizza, and “Itadaki-masu”!

The spongy dough is seasoned well, and a lot of beef tendons are stuffed inside of Okonomiyaki!
Also, spring onion plays a good role as refreshment!!

I was so happy and didn’t take time to finish up the whole.
My company who is from western part of Japan ordered rice with Okonomiyaki!
We don’t do that in Tokyo, but that’s western style of eating Okonomiyaki with rice!
She put cut Okonomiyaki and put on the rice, hmm delicious♡

Pizza Okonomiyaki? Cheese and Tomato are the Perfect Combination

All right! The next “tomato cheese Okonomiyaki” came to our table!
We cut into pieces…

And perfectly melted cheese and bright colored mini tomatoes came out.

The creamy and rich taste of cheese and refreshing tomatoes goes very well with Okonomiyaki. It’s quite mild too.
Kids would love this taste!
The tomato gets more sweetness as they heated.

It’s also enjoyable to have hot Okonomiyaki with a group of people by browning the heat!
I could stop saying, “oh, this is yummy” throughout the time!
People at the restaurant were friendly too.
Recommended place to go with your friends!

writer：Tanna♡