Griddle & dumplings ── Konamono (flour-based griddle dishes)
Usu-yaki
Usu-yaki — a thin, soy-brushed wheat crepe sold at Morioka's shrine festivals
"Usu-yaki," sold from festival stalls around Morioka, Iwate's Hachiman Shrine, is a thin round of water-thinned wheat batter topped with scallion, pickled red ginger, and dried baby shrimp, brushed with soy sauce at the end.
- Origin: Iwate Morioka
- About 460 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
A wheat-flour batter thinned with water is spread into a thin round and topped with scallion, pickled red ginger, dried baby shrimp, tenkasu, and nori before cooking. Brushing soy sauce on with a pastry brush at the end is said to be the finishing touch, and the chewy batter carries the shrimp's flavor and the ginger's kick as accents. It's sometimes rolled up before it's handed over, a shape easy to eat on the move.
How it's made
Water-thinned batter is spread thin and round on the griddle, then topped with scallion, red ginger, baby shrimp, tenkasu, and nori and cooked through. Soy sauce is brushed over the surface once it's done. It's typically made on a large commercial griddle, and stall vendors turning them out in quick succession is said to be a fixture of the festival scene, the thin batter and short cook time keeping the line moving.
Why it took this shape
Sold from festival stalls at Morioka's Hachiman Shrine and during New Year's visits, it's said to be familiar only within a narrow part of the city and little known elsewhere in Iwate. Its name reflects its defining trait — a batter rolled thin — and similar thin wheat-batter snacks go by different names in other regions, such as Hita's heko-yaki. Being thin enough to cook fast on a stall's limited equipment and time is thought to be what settled it into this shape. That tie to the festival is said to hold true today.
Before you go
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- Tanabata and festival food stallsA guide to the somen said to be eaten on Tanabata, and to festival-stall staples like yakisoba, takoyaki, candy apples, and shaved ice.
- Takeout and convenience store customsHow to answer "Shall I warm it up?", choosing chopsticks and a paid plastic bag, saying whether you'll eat in or take out, handling trash and eating while walking, and the different tax rate for takeout versus eating in.
Dishes in the same style
- AkashiyakiOctopus folded into a batter of wheat flour, jin-ko starch, egg, and dashi, cooked and dipped in a warm broth — Akashi's own take on the round batter-and-octopus dish, distinguished from takoyaki by that broth in place of sauce.
- Fuchu-yakiA Fuchu, Hiroshima take on okonomiyaki that swaps sliced pork belly for ground beef or pork worked right into the batter, so the meat's flavor is said to come through evenly in every bite.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Iwate
- Azuki BattoRested wheat dough cut into wide noodle strips is served in a sugar-sweetened red-bean broth — made along the Sanriku coast for building-raising and harvest celebrations, with a custom of eating it seven times on the seventh day of Obon for good health.
- Hecchoko DangoDumplings of millet and sorghum flour, each dimpled in the center, are simmered in a sweet red-bean soup — also called "ukiuki dango," a harvest-close treat from rice-poor northern Iwate where they float to the surface as they cook.
- Hina ManjuRice-flour dough tinted with food coloring is wrapped around red-bean paste and shaped into flowers, peaches or rabbits using wooden molds — tied to a doll-viewing custom in Hanamaki's Ohasama area, offered alongside kirisensho at the Girls' Festival.
- Hizu NamasuThin slices of cartilage from a salmon's head — "hizu" — are salted, cured in vinegar and tossed with daikon and carrot namasu — a rare delicacy from just one small part of the fish, a New Year dish where salmon run up Miyako Bay.
- Dento Mochi RyoriAn umbrella term for some 300 ways of dressing mochi — sweet red bean, edamame paste, walnut, natto, zoni and more. A domain-era custom of pounding mochi twice a month left Ichinoseki with a "mochi calendar" of 60-plus occasions a year and a formal ceremonial mochi course still observed today.
- Imo no Ko JiruAutumn taro is simmered with chicken, tofu, daikon and carrot in a soy broth — a fall favorite of the taro-growing Kitakami river valley, still enjoyed at riverside "imoni-kai" gatherings around Kitakami's Futako district.