These days, izakaya restaurants are all the rage in Northern California. In Japan, these are drinking establishments that also serve food, generally small plates and often within a single theme, such as yakitori. In California, the food seems to be more important than the drink, which is not always the case in Japan. I’ve only been to a few izakaya restaurants, but I've always enjoyed the experience, at least the part I can remember.

On a recent trip to New York, I made my first visit to Kitchen Arts and Letters. There I found a book by Mark Robinson call Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook. In the book, I found a recipe for tomorokoshi no kakiage which translates into English as a corn fritter. The recipe looked adaptable as an amuse-bouche.

Little corn fritters were a standard preparation when I use to assist Charlie Vollmar with his cooking classes. The fritters consisted of fresh corn kernels in a batter that were shallow-fried until crisp. The recipe in Izakaya was similar except the shape was more of a ball. Also, the batter called for cake flour instead of the usual all-purpose flour. I was intrigued.

One night, I assembled all the ingredients and started to prepare the fritters according to the recipe, but I was taken over by the spirit of okonomiyaki! I’ve always been told that okonomiyaki is a recent, post World War II, phenomena. Apparently, the history may be longer. It’s antecedents go back a few hundred years. I “discovered” okonomiyaki in 1990 in the town of Kochi.

My wife, son, uncle, and I were traveling around the island of Shikoku, the forth of the four main islands that make up Japan. My uncle was interested in visiting a number of the famous temples on the island. The rest of our motley group was just along for the ride. One particularly hot evening, we took shelter in a department store, and we decided to eat dinner at their restaurant on the second floor. We sat in a small booth where part of the table was actually a flat-top griddle. Our waitress brought various ingredients and preceded to prepare a large pancake filled with some of the ingredients. The remaining ingredients were used to cover the top of the cooked pancake. She used a triangular-shaped spatula to serve each of us a piece of the pancake.

I don’t remember what my impression was of my first okonomiyaki. When we got to Hiroshima, we discovered an okonomiyaki restaurant next to our hotel, so we had the dish there a couple of times. Since then, I have also eaten the dish in Osaka, Tokyo, Toronto, and San Francisco. In each case, it was different. Today, when I have the urge for okonomiyaki, I head to my own kitchen to scratch my itch.

The night that I started to make that tomorokoshi no kakiage, I found myself transforming it into a miniature okonomiyaki. I prepared the original recipe faithfully, but instead of making my fritter three-dimensional, I made it flat like a pancake. The resulting fritter tasted okay, but I wanted more flavor. Much more. After the addition of some okonomi sauce, aonori, and katsuobushi, as I would add to okonomiyaki, I had a winner.