Monjayaki of Tsukishima

Monjayaki is a Tokyo dish and it is not okonomiyaki - the batter is far thinner, closer to a soup, and it never sets into a pancake. The method is specific: the solid ingredients are fried on the griddle first and pushed into a ring, the liquid batter is poured into the middle, the wall is broken when it starts to thicken, everything is mixed and spread thin, and then it is left until the underside catches and goes crisp. It is eaten straight off the griddle in small amounts, scraped up with hagashi, little metal spatulas, and eaten off them. Tsukishima's Monja Street runs a few hundred metres with something like seventy shops on and around it, mostly small, and it is the accepted home of the dish. Shops will cook it for you if asked, but doing it yourself is the norm and staff will show you.

What you actually see

• A liquid batter - poured into a ring of fried ingredients, not a pancake mix.
• The crisp underside - left until it catches on the griddle, which is the good part.
• Metal spatulas - small hagashi used to scrape and eat directly off the plate.
• Seventy shops - a few hundred metres of Monja Street given over to one dish.

When to go

All year; evenings, when the street is working. Two hours.

Honest expectations

It looks unappealing and many visitors say so - the taste is better than the appearance. Cooking it yourself takes practice and staff usually intervene. Popular shops queue at weekends. It is filling in a way that sneaks up.

Nearby

Tsukiji outer market is north-west; Ginza is beyond it.