Monjayaki appears as a signature dish in 1 Japan cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Monjayaki · Tokyo
Tokyo's Tsukishima-island griddle pancake: a wet batter of dashi-flavoured flour with cabbage, seafood and bacon, cooked thin and crisp on a hot teppan, scraped up with small spatulas and eaten straight off the griddle.
Monjayaki is Tokyo's distinctive answer to Osaka okonomiyaki, originating in the early 20th century as a children's snack at penny-candy shops where the runny batter was used to scrawl letters on the griddle (the name derives from moji-yaki, letter-grilled). By the postwar period it had moved into the Tsukishima district of Tokyo Bay, where over 70 monjayaki specialists now line Nishi-Naka-dori, known as Monja Street. The form is wholly Tokyo: a much wetter batter than okonomiyaki, eaten with tiny hagashi spatulas straight off the hot griddle in small crisped bites. Standard fillings include mentaiko-mochi-cheese, kaisen (seafood), and the canonical mix-of-everything moriawase.
Where to eat in Tokyo:
- Ameya-Yokocho street stalls