Okonomiyaki

The name means grilled how you like it, which understates how much the two main versions differ. The Osaka style mixes everything - flour batter, dashi, egg, a large volume of shredded cabbage, and whatever else - into one bowl, then cooks it as a thick round cake on the griddle, turned once, finished with sauce, mayonnaise, dried seaweed and katsuobushi that moves in the heat. The Hiroshima style layers instead: a thin crepe of batter first, then a mound of cabbage and bean sprouts, pork belly, a nest of fried yakisoba or udon noodles, and an egg on the griddle beside it, the whole assembly flipped onto the egg at the end. Hiroshima's is taller, contains noodles as standard, and uses more cabbage. Both are cooked at the counter in front of you or on a griddle set in the table. Okonomimura in Hiroshima stacks about two dozen small stalls over three floors.

What you actually see

• Osaka mixed - everything combined in a bowl and cooked as one thick cake.
• Hiroshima layered - crepe, cabbage, pork, noodles and egg built up and flipped.
• Noodles as standard - in the Hiroshima version, not the Osaka one.
• Okonomimura - about two dozen stalls stacked over three floors in Hiroshima.

When to go

All year. An hour. Lunch is quieter than evening at the counter places.

Honest expectations

Griddle-table restaurants leave you to cook it yourself in some places - ask when ordering. It is heavier than it looks. Popular stalls queue. Cabbage volume means the Hiroshima version takes twenty minutes to cook.

Nearby

Dotonbori in Osaka and the Okonomimura building in central Hiroshima.