Last weekend from January 31st until February 2nd, our Food Escape team joined Local Fest event in Gandaria City and opened our culinary booth. It was a very fun and exciting experience since we didn’t expect that we got that kind of enthusiastic responses. There were only 16 F&B booths in total, selling various kinds of food, from onigiri to sushi, cake to macaroons, even ice creams and churros, it was very amazing event, indeed. We opened a Japanese-themed booth selling okonomiyaki, or Japanese pancake -if you prefer, but this time, we wanted to introduce the most original okonomiyaki which comes from Hiroshima prefecture.
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| We were in booth F15 🙂 |
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| Our booth decoration, the night before the event. |
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| People were actually lining up to get the taste of our okonomiyaki, thank you! |
Why Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki?
For Japanese, if talking about okonomiyaki, they’ll immediately think about Hiroshima, because it’s the origin of the the real okonomiyaki. It’s like we think about Yogyakarta when talking about gudeg, or gado-gado if talking about Jakarta.
The History
Before World War II, there was some kind of snack called “10 yen Western food”, which was made mainly from flour, spring onions, chunks of katsuobushi (bonito shavings), tororo konbu (sliced seaweed), brushed with Worcestershire sauce, folded and served in a roll of newspaper sheets. It was a really simple food, considered snack and only popular among kids. After the war ended, it was a very difficult time including the food stock, the available ones were mainly flour and vegetables; that was the beginning of okonomiyaki. There were many different ingredients of okonomiyaki (hence the name), based on personal preferences of the makers, usually the widows of soldiers who died in the war. Those women opened okonomiyaki shop and in the beginning, the main ingredient was spring onions, therefore it was called “negiyaki“. But spring onions only grows one time in the year so later the main ingredients were changed to cabbage because it was cheap and easier to get the whole year. It became even more popular among adults and people started bringing ingredients they had to the shops to get okonomiyaki cooked according to their preferences. Later on, due to the amount of ingredients used, okonomiyaki couldn’t be folded anymore and became like what we know today.
There were three of us serving, but we really felt not enough. The demands were so breath-taking we almost couldn’t believe it! If everything goes well, we are planning to open the restaurant of OTAKUDOU Okonomiyaki in the near future. Anyway, we would like to thank everyone who came visiting us! And hopefully we can serve you again sometime soon! 😀
OTAKUDOU Okonomiyaki
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[…] Talking about okonomiyaki, most people only know the ones from Kansai region of Japan, a mixture of flour, vegetables and meat mixed altogether and cooked on griddles resembling pancakes. Little that people know that the origin of this particular dish is actually from Hiroshima, made with totally different method. If you’re interested in reading the history of okonomiyaki, read HERE. […]
[…] Talking about okonomiyaki, most people only know the ones from Kansai region of Japan, a mixture of flour, vegetables and meat mixed altogether and cooked on griddles resembling pancakes. Little that people know that the origin of this particular dish is actually from Hiroshima, made with totally different method. If you’re interested in reading the history of okonomiyaki, read HERE. […]