Okonomiyaki Yukari Sonezaki Head Shop

On the east side of JR Osaka Station, there is a popular okonomiyaki restaurant named ” Yukari ” in the shopping street called Sonezaki Ohatsu Tenjin Dori. One of the specialties of this restaurant is “Fromage-yaki”, a dish made with an abundance of five kinds of cheese, which has been highly praised on numerous TV programs! The sight of melted cheese pouring out from the cross section has become a popular topic for posting on social networking sites such as Instagram.

I was curious about this Fromage-yaki and asked myself, “It’s so popular, but how delicious is it? I went to the restaurant on a Friday night after work to try it for myself. I went to the restaurant expecting a long queue, but what I found was…

More like a Tavern than a restaurant specializing in okonomiyaki, Okonomiyaki Yukari Sonezaki Honten is a restaurant that can also accommodate private parties….

I arrived at the Yukari Sonezaki Head Shop at around 7:00 p.m. At this point, there were about 10 people waiting to enter the storefront and inside the restaurant. The wait time from the time I started lining up to the time I entered the store was about 10 minutes. Considering it was a Friday night, it was not as crowded as I expected. The line at Akiyoshi, a yakitori restaurant next door, was longer. In fact, I mistakenly stood in line for Akiyoshi at first…

The restaurant is a two-story building, and according to the Tabelog, there are 48 seats each on the first and second floors, making it a fairly large restaurant. The menu includes not only okonomiyaki, but also teppan-yaki and snacks, making it more of a tavern than a restaurant specializing in okonomiyaki. If you make good use of it, you can enjoy your after-five time at a very reasonable price.

Highly acclaimed on a nationwide TV program! A no-discovery, real food review of the signature dish, Fromage-yaki at Yukari Sonezaki Head Shop……

Let me introduce you to the signature dish, Fromage-yaki (priced at 1680 yen including tax) that I ordered at the Yukari Sonezaki Head Shop…

First, a pile of okonomiyaki batter is made on the iron plate like this. When half of this dough is placed on it, five kinds of cheese (Gouda, Mozzarella, Cheddar, Fondue, and Processed) are topped on the dough, and then the cheese is sandwiched with the remaining dough. In other words, the okonomiyaki is like five kinds of cheese sandwiched between okonomiyaki dough.

This okonomiyaki dough is baked slowly, turning it over from time to time. It took about 20 minutes from the start of baking to completion. To be honest, I did not expect it to take this long, but at any rate, the okonomiyaki is now complete with sauce and mayonnaise poured over the entire surface of the cooked okonomiyaki!

This is what the finished fromage-yaki looks like. Is it just me, or does it look a bit cake-like? Oh yes, I forgot to mention something important. The waiter takes care of this fromage-yaki from start to finish. So we don’t have to do anything until it’s done.

When I cut the fromage-yaki with a spatula, the melted cheese starts to pour out from inside onto the iron plate. Doesn’t the sight of it make you feel like you’re eating something?

And when I actually tried it… first of all, the texture is very fluffy. The middle layer is made of melted cheese, but the dough itself is also light and airy. Then, the cheese that comes out from between the okonomiyaki dough gets sticky and tangy on the tongue, and it becomes a part of the sauce and mayonnaise, unleashing a huge amount of rich flavor! Yes, it is certainly worthy of the rave reviews it has received on TV.

If I had to describe it in one word, it would be “okonomiyaki that feels like pizza”. My personal feeling is that it was about half pizza. You can add dried bonito flakes and aonori (green laver), but I personally didn’t like them. This is just my personal opinion, but I think it is better to leave the pizza-like part as it is.

As you continue to eat this fromage-yaki, toward the end, the melted cheese heats up on the iron plate and starts to get burnt. This “burnt cheese” is also very aromatic. The surface of the cheese becomes slightly crispy, and when I put it in my mouth, the aroma of the charred cheese wafts softly through my nose… This kind of natural change in flavor is one of the major attractions of fromage baked goods.

However, to be honest, 1680 yen including tax is too expensive for this… I mean, the entire menu of Okonomiyaki Yukari is about 10-20% more expensive than other restaurants. I can’t use it on a daily basis at this price. I felt that okonomiyaki has gone beyond the category of “common people’s food”. This fromage-yaki is only available at Yukari, and there is no doubt about its taste, so I think it is worth repeating even if it is a little expensive. However, if you go to Kiji Honten in Shin-Umeda Shokudo Gai, you can enjoy delicious okonomiyaki at almost half the price of this place, so I recommend you to go there if you just want to eat regular okonomiyaki.

Examples of other okonomiyaki menu items at Okonomiyaki Yukari Sonezaki Head Shop (prices include tax)

• Osaka Castle (a huge okonomiyaki that weighs 1 kg): 4,650 yen
• Yukari yaki (shrimp, Japanese pork belly, scallops, squid, konnyaku): 1,680 yen
• Special mixed okonomiyaki (Japanese pork belly, squid, shrimp) 1,450 yen
• Mentaiko Mochi Cheese W/ Pork Ball and Cheese 1350 yen
• Pork ball with cheese W: 1,350 yen
• Japanese beef ball 1,200 yen
• Kimchi yaki ¥1,080

We can also enjoy fromage-yaki in Tokyo and Yokohama… Access to the Yukari Sonezaki Head Sほp is a one-minute walk from Higashi Umeda Station on the Osaka Metro Tanimachi Line, the closest station to the Yukari Sonezaki Head Store.

There are a total of nine Yukari okonomiyaki restaurants, including the Sonezaki Honten, seven in Umeda, Namba, and Tennoji in Osaka, and one each in Akihabara, Tokyo, and Yokohama. You can order fromage-yaki at any of these stores, so if you are interested, why not visit one of them when you are in the neighborhood and try the melted cheese fromage-yaki for yourself?

Here are the details of the restaurants…