I WISH I'd brought my camera to the greasy joe's fast-food joint we just had supper at. But if you click here you'll see the end product. The reason? Keiko has managed to carve a bit of time for herself, travelling to Nagoya for a school friends' reunion. And so we have lost our cook.
So this is how it works: you go into a minuscule frying shop where 6 chairs are lined up in front of a hot plate 3m long. On the wall facing you is a TV screen. A woman with elasticated "bob hat" awaits your choice of pork or squid. Then, in front of you, she dribbles a little circle of batter; forklifts a 15cm pile of shredded cabbage; drapes the cabbage mountain with long rashers of thinly sliced bacon followed by a handful of bean sprouts; dribbles another dose of batter over the top; flips the whole pile over; compresses the pile with a giant "iron"; cracks an egg adjacent and dumps the diminished food mountain on top of it; tosses it a final time; sloshes on a sweet soy sauce and mayonnaise (yes). And then - and oh for a photo - delivers it in front of you with a short plasterer's trowel. Eating directly off the hot plate the tool is used to hack through the pancake and then acts as a kind of Viking spoon. Anything further from classic Japanese etiquette would be hard to imagine.
And yes, it was delicious. And not at all greasy.
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