Good lord, first it was Night of the Living Zens, where I had lunch two days straight at places with Zen in the name. Now it’s the Killer Rabbits with nasty, pointy teeth. At least there are a few weeks break in between these.
I love being in places that seem like they haven’t seen a foreigner or redecorated since early Showa, so this was right up my alley. Plus I haven’t had okonomiyaki or monja this year, so now I’ve gotten the obligatory consumption out of the way until 2009! On balance, I was fairly positive about this place. How bad can it be? How good can it be?
Two okonomis passed out lips – the first was ‘pizza’. What can I say, if I’m eating ‘Japanese pizza’, I’m going to go whole hog. It tasted pretty good, sort of like…let me think…oh, right. It tasted like okonomiyaki. One odd thing about this place is that the mayonnaise was very thin, in fact I’m thinking that I misunderstood about the white stuff that goes on okonomi, and the tip of the bottle had been cut too much, so it wasn’t possible to do that really cool thing where you move the bottle fast and get a nice pattern of mayo-strings. The fish flakes were also very finely cut, but this wasn’t such a big deal.
The second oko was actually interesting – squid ink, squid and cheese! You’d never get squid and cheese in an Italian restaurant, right? Cooked up to a lovely, gluey gray color with some brown crispy bits. Thinking back now, I had a slight twinge of ‘I wouldn’t mind eating that again’, but unfortunately it will have to wait at least until January since I’ve met my 2008 quota.
Learned one other thing – evidently the fabled mentai-cheese-mochi combo is only for monja (so claimed the staff). Never heard that before, but I’ll be on the lookout for the tendency next year when I go to okono again.
Rabbit attack!
03-3669-0503
Jon,
One difference between monja and okonomi is that one is from Edo, and the other from Kansai (respectively).