Okonomiyaki Lunch in Kamakura

After hanging out with the Great Buddha, it was time for lunch. We walked through the streets of Kamakura, which was interesting. There were a ton of stores and restaurants. We stopped at a few restaurants to peruse the menus before coming to one that served okonomiyaki. Dallas and I had no idea what this was, but Chris explained that it was kind of like a cross between an omelette and a pancake, made with vegetables, meat and seafood. And that you grill them yourself on the tabletop. Cool! Sounded delicious and it was something we never had before.

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Oishii Okonomiyaki!!

The menu had a bunch of okonomiyaki to choose from, but said that each included “diced cabbage, bean sprouts, crispy bits, egg and a pancake-like batter.” Dallas and I had the menus translated into English, but Chris had a Japanese menu. Funny thing was that they weren’t the same! It made us wonder what we’d been missing out on with the English menus. If they not only translated them to English, but also edited them to include only the things they thought would be appealing to English speakers!

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The restaurant had a basket of toys that kids could pick from to play with. This helped distract Kai from touching the grill!

We ended up ordering three okonomiyaki – Gomoku-ten (mix of beef, pork, and shrimp), natto-ten (fermented soybeans), and kimchi. Chris and Dallas were way into the natto, which kind of grosses me out. I still had a bite, but it was not my favorite. And not Tandy’s either! the mixed one was probably my favorite, but I also liked the okonomiyaki with the kimchi, which was everyone else’s favorite, so we ended up ordering an extra one of those!

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Raw okonomiyaki ingredients in a bowl.

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Chris showing us how to mix up the batter.

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Dallas, mixing.

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Dumping the okonomiyaki batters on the griddle.

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Cooking okonomiyaki.

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When the okonomiyaki was cooked, Chris spread some kind of okonomiyaki sauce on top.

Chris showed us the procedure for making the okonomiyaki. The waitress brought each one to the table with just the raw ingredients in a bowl. The first thing to do is to mix the ingredients to make a kind of batter. Then you pour the contents of the bowl onto the griddle in the table. When the cooking is done, you can top the okonomiyaki with different sauces, shoyu, Japanese mayonnaise, aonori, fish flakes, etc. Oh, and we also had the gomoku-ten (mixed beef, pork, and shrimp) yakisoba. This was cooked kind of the same as the okonomiyaki, but it wasn’t the pancake/omelette. It was just soba noodles with different ingredients mixed in.

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Yakisoba on the grill.

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Ramune
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Ramune

 

I saw something to drink on the menu called ramune. It said it was lemonade, but when it arrived it was so odd! It was a carbonated lemon-lime drink served in a really distinctive bottle. The bottle is made of glass and has a marble that rolls around inside the pinched neck. The drink was fine, but I think it was the novelty of the bottle that I enjoyed more!

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Tandy in front of the restaurant.

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The front of the restaurant – go up the stairs to the second floor.

What a fun and interactive lunch! And it was great to try something totally new that was SO delicious!

As a side note: I’d like to recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Kamakura, but I have no idea what it is called! I think we took a right on a road that lead to Hase-dera, where we headed after lunch. I was messing around in Google Maps and found it in street view. So, here’s where it is and what the storefront looks like:


View Larger Map

After lunch, we were on our way!

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Walking over to Hase-dera.

2 thoughts on “Okonomiyaki Lunch in Kamakura

  1. you can get ramune in chicago (weirdly, you used to be able to get them in the UIC cafeterias) – and if you go to mitsuwa, you can choose from a gazillion flavors.

    I really wish there were more restaurants in chicago that had more varied japanese food – sushi is great, but good yakisoba or tonkatsu is so much better.

    • Hey, Cindy – Thanks for the ramune tip! I’ll have to look for it when we go to Japanese restaurants now. Also, yes….. we’ve been trying to look up foods we enjoyed in Japan and are having a hard time finding many of them!

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