Tsukishima monjayaki: Tokyo's secret griddle dish

Everyone has heard of okonomiyaki. Almost no visitor has heard of monjayaki, and it's the more Tokyo of the two — it looks like a puddle of loose batter on a hotplate, and most people seeing it for the first time assume something has gone wrong.

Tsukishima is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay whose main street holds more than seventy monja restaurants in a row — an entire district living off a single dish. Two and a half hours here is a lesson in making it: the solids go down first, chopped small with two little spatulas, banked into a ring, and only then does the liquid go into the middle to bubble and thicken. You eat with those same small spatulas, scraping thin pieces off the edge of the griddle — the slightly scorched parts are the best.

You cook it yourself; the guide coaches. It sounds fussy and takes exactly one attempt to learn, and it's the kind of tour a family enjoys together — children love being allowed at the griddle. After the monja comes a round of okonomiyaki so you can compare the two side by side, plus the story of why this dish was born in a poorer Tokyo.