Karamaru

I'ts time for Okonomiyaki. 

When I first came to Japan 10 years ago I had never seen this before. I've heard it's slowly making it's way to the US but I haven't seen it yet. It's a savory pancake batter with whatever you want on top of it, cooked either at your table or at the bar. "Okonomi" means "something you like" and "yaki" means grilled (usually) So buckle up for a little "something you like grilled"!

Welcome to Karamaru in the Araki Cho neighborhood in Shinjuku. 

This whole area is phenomenal. It was a pleasure and entertainment district in the old days. Now it's a quiet neighborhood filled with bars and restaurants. It gets pretty lively on Friday and Saturday night. There are around 200 different, tiny, hole in the walls in this area.  If you're visiting Tokyo this area is a must visit. After dinner wander around looking for a bar, you can't go wrong.

Back to Karamaru though. This place has oysters and I'm sure they're good but I've not had them. I save my oyster meals for Chika no Iki. Karamaru serves delicious, warm, filling, greasy comfort food.  Okonomiyaki takes a bit of time to cook so you'll want to start with drinks and some sides. They do beers, wines and whiskey drinks here. I'm sure they have some chu-hi as well.

We started with the Coriander Salad and the Macaroni Salad. Their macaroni salad is killer. They use Japanese mayonnaise which is made with egg yolks as opposed to egg whites. So, mayonnaise haters beware. The coriander salad is done in a Thai style.  It comes with a bit of Laarb, which is a spicy lime minced pork dish from northern Thailand. So good.

Next up we had the Nankotsu.  This dish may sound strange at first but it's delicious and I always order it here.  It's fried chicken cartilage. "Eww." you say. "Try it!" I say.  It took one try for me to fall in love with this dish. It is the perfect blend of crunchy and deep fried. Served with a garam masala curry salt to dip those perfect little deep fried nuggets in. After this and the macaroni salad you'll definitely understand why this is Japanese comfort food....and we haven't gotten to the good stuff yet.

Take your time with the drinks and the starters cause cooking the okonomiyaki does take a little while. It will arrive at your table piping hot and usually pre cut. There are some basic varieties of okonomiyaki to choose from on the menu and then you start adding whatever sounds nice. There is no wrong way to do this. Want seafood? Get the shrimp and octopus. Want pork? Get the belly fat.  Want it all? You mad man, go for it.  We choose a pork okonomiyaki Hiroshima style (they serve the pancake on top of yakisoba noodles. It's like ordering spaghetti served under a pizza. Buono!

This particular okonomiyaki is thinly sliced bacon that is grilled. Then the batter is poured on top, the batter contains egg and a boat load of thinly sliced cabbage. For our toppings we added mochi (rice cake), green onions and kimchi. The mochi takes on a mozzarella like texture, most people confuse it for cheese...which you can also put on your okonomiyaki!

This one was our seafood okonomiyaki.  It's still has the egg and cabbage pancake in there but instead of noodles it was served on bean sprouts.  We had shrimp and I think squid, but like i said, get whatever sounds good to you.   That sauce on top is a sweet and sour BBQ sauce that you are going to love! That white bottle with the red cap on the right is mayonnaise. I LOVE adding a bit of mayonnaise on top, highly recommend it. Nothing like adding a few more calories to something already terribly unhealthy. 

If you're visiting as a group of 2 that might be too much food. I suggest ordering one and seeing how you do, just remember it'll be a bit of time before the next one is cooked if you order another. Just get more beer, you'll survive. The place has  a real friendly vibe to it.  The staff are great. They also have counter seating if you want to watch them do their magic. They do also, on occasion, have really good, reasonably priced sashimi platters if you want to start off with something lighter than deep fried cartilage and mayonnaise drenched macaroni salad. Or get all of it!

And bam! An english menu.  Sometimes an English menu is a sign that what you'll be ordering may not be the freshest stuff in the restaurant. They cant keep reprinting the english menu every time they get something fresh in. With okonomiyaki however, the ingredients don't vary too often (despite their being a lot of options) so the english menu at Karamaru generally reflects the same items on the Japanese menu.

Okonomiyaki restaurants are a blast and no trip to Tokyo would be complete without visiting one.

Enjoy!

As of writing this these guys don't appear to be on google maps. SO just head to where the dot in this map is and you can miss it.  Or just wander around Araki Cho and you'll find it.