Kickarse okonomiyaki

It’s 7:30pm on a mild Thursday at Ninja, a Japanese restaurant on Street 278. Seated are myself, The Scribe, The Libyan, The Ed. and the Man of Few Words. Three of the party, myself included, are in the midst of a severe okonomiyaki ‘coma’. In a textbook case of overreach we have OD’ed on the dish and are now unwilling and unable to move. But The Ed. is having nothing of it.

“Come on! Get up! Let’s move! The night is young and so are at least two of us.” “Nothing doing,” I reply. “We have been Ninja’ed.” The Ed., bless her, knows to give up this fight and seats herself back down. “Bar person, another soda and lime, please.” The rest of us can just sit contented. We know we’re going nowhere in a hurry.

Open since June, Ninja is one of a growing number of value-priced Japanese eateries that have sprung up, like the proverbial mushrooms, over the last year. Deeper geopolitical processes are at work here. A re-pivoting of Japanese capital out of the Sino region, following nationalist riots in 2012, has inspired an increase in Nipponese investment and migration to the Kingdom.

With Phnom Penh’s burgeoning Japanese expat population has come a bunch of young (at heart, if not always in age) entrepreneurs, eager to fill the culinary needs of their compatriots, as well as a whole bunch of Phnom Penh disciplines and converts. Part of a national chain of 70 restaurants back in Japan, Ninja’s Phnom Penh branch is its first move into the Southeast Asian market and judging by the busy tables around us it’s going down a storm.

Ninja follows the style of a Japanese izakaya, a term that loosely translates as ‘pub eatery’. In its native country the izakaya has evolved to cater for the salary man (and woman) seeking simple home-style foods to complement their alcohol consumption and conversation. A place to leave your briefcase, shed your suit jacket and progressively ‘let go’, izakayas are not about style; their focus is substance.

Beer, sake, soda cocktails and whiskey are the usual drinks of choice at an izakaya, supplemented by a range of foods that read like a catch-all of popular Japanese domestic cooking, or what you would eat at home if it didn’t take three hours on the Tokyo subway. Our table’s trawl through the menu included a corn bowl (‘Tasty!’), karaage (bite-sized fried chicken), teriyaki (‘Bring me more!’), crumbed smelt (‘Delicious’), as well as a neat miso/rice bowl set (at $1.70, a bargain). Sushi, noodles and other fish dishes also fill Ninja’s extensive menu.

But it was the okonomiyaki that foiled our efforts to navigate further, although the three to four pints of Angkor each probably didn’t help. For the uninitiated, okonomiyaki can sound decidedly weird; often described as ‘Japanese Pizza’, in truth it resembles more a large pancake with everything thrown into the mix. And the breakdown of the word – okonomoi (‘what you like’) and yaki (‘grilled’ or ‘cooked’) – suggests that this gaijin interpretation is pretty close to the mark.

Cooked on a hot plate, the heart of the dish is shredded cabbage on a base of pork-belly strips or noodles. To this are added a mixture featuring butter and flour, grated nagaimo (a type of yam), eggs, green onion and, at different times, shrimp, vegetables and even cheese. Capping this delectable concoction, literally, are measured strips of mayonnaise and otafaku (a thick dark sauce, resembling the oyster variety but sweeter) and a scattering of seaweed flakes and pickled ginger.

In Japan the dish is associated with the city of Hiroshima and the lower-central area of Honshu, Japan’s largest island. From here it is thought to have originated from a crepe-like recipe that steadily evolved, from the early 1900s, to include the savoury elements of today’s dish. Meanwhile, depending on where you are in Japan, okonomiyaki can take on some interesting regional variations – the Tokyo variety, for example, is typically smaller than its provincial cousins.

Tasty, undoubtedly, although my Khmer friend Tevee might require more convincing: “I don’t like it; it smells funny.” (What?! Have you smelt prahok lately?!) Personally, okonomiyaki is a Japanese fave and the Ninja version is up there with the best I have tried. Just don’t expect to go anywhere quickly if you overindulge!

Ninja, #14b Street 278; 088 8617623.