Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-Style (Hiroshimayaki)

Okonomiyaki is my single favorite Japanese food, and it has been since the early 1980s, when I first had it while I was stationed at Iwakuni. I’ve eaten it in Hiroshima too, which is where this particular style belongs. Iwakuni is in Yamaguchi, only about 40 km from Hiroshima — a short train ride — so the local okonomiyaki leans Hiroshima-style, and that is the one I fell for.

The name means ‘grilled the way you like it’ (okonomi = as you like it, yaki = grilled). It’s a savory cabbage griddle-cake — people call it ‘Japanese pizza,’ but that’s a lazy label; there’s no dough, no crust, nothing pizza about it except that it’s round and cheap. What makes the Hiroshima version special, and harder, is that it is LAYERED, not mixed — and it hides a whole layer of fried yakisoba noodles inside. → photo 1

This takes some nerve and a couple of confident flips. It is worth every bit of it.

Ingredients

• Batter (thin — it’s a wrapper, not a pancake)
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup water

pinch salt

• The build, per okonomiyaki
• 3-4 cups finely shredded cabbage (it looks like way too much — it collapses)
• 1/2 cup bean sprouts
• 2 Tbsp tenkasu (tempura crumbs)
• 1 scallion, chopped
• 3-4 thin slices pork belly
• 1 portion fresh yakisoba (or udon) noodles
• 1 egg

Neutral oil for the griddle

• To finish
• Okonomiyaki sauce (Otafuku is the archetype — a thick, sweet, Worcestershire-like brown sauce)
• Aonori (dried green seaweed flakes)
• Katsuobushi (bonito flakes)
• Kewpie mayonnaise (optional — see Notes)
• Beni shoga (red pickled ginger)

Directions

Key ingredients

Worcestershire Sauce

1. This is built in stages on a flat griddle or a large non-stick pan. Give yourself room — you need open griddle space to fry the noodles and the egg separately. A too-small pan is the single biggest obstacle at home.
2. 1 - Thin crepe base:
3. Whisk the batter smooth. Ladle about three-quarters of it onto the hot, oiled griddle and spread it into a wide, thin circle, spiraling outward. Keep it thin — a thick base bakes up doughy. Dust a little katsuobushi over it if you like.
4. 2 - The cabbage mountain:
5. Pile the shredded cabbage on the crepe absurdly high — a good three inches. Then the bean sprouts, the tenkasu, and the scallion. It will look like it can’t possibly work. It wilts down dramatically. This tall pile is the signature move. → photo 2
6. 3 - Pork on top, then drizzle:
7. Lay the pork belly slices flat over the whole mound, then drizzle the remaining batter over the top so the stack has something to hold it together after the flip.
8. 4 - THE FIRST FLIP:
9. Wait until the crepe edges set and curl — a few minutes. Then, in one committed motion (two spatulas, or a spatula and your hand), flip the entire pile over so the cabbage is now trapped between the crepe on top and the pork against the griddle. Press GENTLY — don’t crush it — and let it steam 8-10 minutes until the cabbage fully collapses. Rushing this is mistake number one; undercooked cabbage stays crunchy and weeps water.
10. 5 - Fry the noodles separately:
11. On an open part of the griddle, loosen the yakisoba, season or sauce it lightly, and press it into a round patty about the size of your okonomiyaki. Then slide the whole cabbage-and-pork stack on top of the noodle patty.
12. 6 - The egg, and THE SECOND FLIP:
13. Crack an egg onto an open spot, break the yolk, and spread it into a similar-sized round. Slide the stack on top of the egg, press so it grabs, then flip once more so the egg ends up as the top (or bottom, cook’s choice). Now you have crepe / cabbage+pork / noodles / egg in one tower.
14. 7 - Sauce and finish:
15. Brush generously with okonomiyaki sauce, then aonori, then katsuobushi (it ‘dances’ in the heat). Mayo and beni shoga to taste. Eat it hot off the griddle.

Notes

Where this recipe came from This is the standard Hiroshima layered method, cross-checked across several reliable Japanese cooking sources. The dish I know firsthand — it’s my favorite, from Iwakuni and Hiroshima in the 1980s — but this is a faithful reconstruction of the technique, not a single shop’s secret.

The one diagnostic that separates the styles There are two great okonomiyaki traditions, and the clean rule to tell them apart is this: Osaka/Kansai style has everything MIXED into one batter and griddled like a thick pancake, with no noodles inside. Hiroshima style is LAYERED in stages and (almost always) has a fried-noodle layer built into it. Noodles + layering = Hiroshima. Mixed batter, no noodles = Osaka. Most of the online confusion comes from Osaka’s own noodle variant, modanyaki — but there the noodles sit on top of an already-mixed pancake, not as an internal structural layer. → photo 1

The post-war Hiroshima story is true The layered noodle form is not ancient — it grew out of Hiroshima’s recovery after the atomic bomb of 6 August 1945. In a ruined city with little food, cheap American relief wheat flour became thin griddle pancakes descended from a pre-war one-sen snack (issen yoshoku). As people could scrounge more, they added cabbage, then pork, then noodles — a cheap carbohydrate that turned a snack into a full meal — and because you can’t fold a tangle of noodles and a mountain of cabbage into one batter, cooks stacked it in layers. That stacking IS the Hiroshima style. It was a gradual evolution over the late 1940s and ’50s, not a single dated invention, and it genuinely helped feed a rebuilding city.

The deeper ancestry (don’t overclaim it) Both styles trace back through issen yoshoku to funoyaki, a thin flour-and-water tea cake tied to the 16th-century tea master Sen no Rikyu — but funoyaki was a sweet, and it’s a technique ancestor (griddled thin wheat batter), not the dish. ‘Rikyu invented okonomiyaki’ is overstated.

The mayo question Kewpie mayo is everywhere on okonomiyaki today and is standard on Osaka-style, but it is debated in Hiroshima — the old-school Hiroshima finish is sauce and aonori, with mayo a modern add-on. Use it or don’t; both camps are defensible.

Variations Hiroshima shops love add-ins: oysters, squid, cheese, mochi. The Osaka mixed style bulks and lightens its batter with grated nagaimo (mountain yam) and dashi — a totally different texture, a hearty pancake rather than a layered stack. Negiyaki swaps the cabbage mountain for a mass of green onion. All of these live under the Osaka umbrella word konamon, ‘flour things.’

Sourcing Bottled okonomiyaki sauce (Otafuku, a Hiroshima company) and Kewpie mayo are worth buying rather than faking; aonori and katsuobushi keep forever in the pantry and fridge. Fresh yakisoba noodles are in the refrigerated section of most Asian groceries.