Tsukishima Specialty · Runny Griddle Batter
Monjayaki
Photo: Douglas P Perkins / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0
The batter is so watery it can't hold a pancake shape at all — cooks scrape it into a crispy ring on the griddle and eat straight off the hotplate with a tiny spatula, never off a proper plate.
A dashi-heavy, almost liquid batter mixed with cabbage and other fillings is poured onto a hot teppan, where it spreads thin and is scraped and pressed into a crackling crust, eaten bit by bit straight off the griddle with a flat metal spatula called a hagashi.
Why it's made this way: The dish traces back to a simple flour-and-water candy-store snack called mojiyaki sold to Edo-period children, but it took root specifically on Tsukishima — man-made land at the mouth of the Sumida River built in 1892 — where roughly eighty monjayaki shops now define what's nicknamed "Monja Town."
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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