A couple weekends ago I went to Miyajima and Hiroshima to see one of the 3 Best Views in Japan and visit the Peace Memorial Museum. Of course, there was also lots of eating involved.
The streets of Miyajima were lined with stands selling deep-fried fish cakes stuffed with all manner of wonderful and terrible things. On a stick! I tried the gobo, which was kind of like a squishy, fish-flavored egg roll. Delicious, if you're into fish cakes.
Oysters were also everywhere in Miyajima: harvested in a factory near my hotel, displayed in glass cases in restaurants and, most delectably, grilled right there on the street, their charred, seaside smell impossible to resist. Drawn by the long line of people snaking toward it, I stopped for lunch at a restaurant with a store-front oyster grill.
We had to order those, of course, and I also got the oyster donburi, which apparently was once featured on TV. It was possibly the best rice bowl I've eaten in Japan. The oysters, soft and slightly bitter, were mixed with egg-laced dashi and spread over the hot rice like a warm wool blanket, the juices soaking into the rice until every grain was shiny and plump with flavor. With pickles and a clear soup, it was a truly satisfying autumn lunch.
But there was still dinner to worry about. Luckily, Hiroshima is the home of Okonomiyaki-mura, a building boasting a collection of restaurants devoted to Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. In Osaka, okonomiyaki is a sort of pancake batter fattened with shredded cabbage and meat or seafood, often cooked and served from a hot grill panel in front of you. The resulting savory pancake is somewhat like a frittata in texture. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, on the other hand, is layered, a thin sheet of batter below a hefty pile of shredded cabbage below thin strips of meat below a fried egg, with a thick nest of soba or udon noodles compressed somewhere in there.
The movements of the okonomiyaki maker were swift and precise as he turned and fried and pressed. I ordered mochi and extra green onions on mine, so beneath the green shower of negi and the sweet, sticky sauce painted over the top was a chewy nugget of hot mochi, soft and yielding as cheese. I think the little boy sitting at the counter near me summed it up when he yelled twice, "Umai!" ("Delicious!"), as if what was in his belly was so good, he couldn't keep it to himself.
Wow uncanny.. i was in okonomiyamura like 2 weekends ago... and youre absolutely right.. it was brilliant. and my friend preferred the hiroshima style okonomiyaki too.. actually, despite being tiny, hiroshima town itself has a lot of hidden treasures scattered all over the place eh?
and oh my gawd, miyajima oysters... *swoon
love the site. keep em coming :)