Dotonbori Street Stall · Pressed Squid
Ikayaki (Osaka-Style Grilled Squid)
Photo: User TY, Japanese Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
Osaka's version isn't a skewer of squid rings — it's chopped squid pressed flat on a griddle with a savory dashi batter, giving it a crepe-like texture unique to the city's flour-based street food culture.
Whole squid is pressed flat on a hot iron griddle with a thin savory batter, brushed with soy sauce as it cooks, then handed over folded or on a stick, hot enough to eat while walking down Dotonbori.
Why it's made this way: It grew out of Osaka's "konamon" (flour-based) food culture, with one account tracing an early version to a shrine stall at Sumiyoshi Taisha before it took off after a 1957 stall opened at Umeda's Hanshin Department Store — Dotonbori and Namba's stalls carry that tradition today.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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