Hiroshima Restaurants

There is an entire floor of restaurants at the Hiroshima JR Station - on the 6th floor of the 'Asse' department store.

There are a whole range of sushi, Japanese and Western restaurants. We tried one that did an interesting range of fusion dishes involving spaghetti with Japanese ingredients.

Favorite Dish: Spaghetti with fish roe and seaweed (see picture). Absolutely delicious!

Hiroshima is the leading oyster producing area of Japan. They can be eaten raw or grilled. Not being a great fan of raw seafood, I had mine cooked.

There are lots of restaurants in the Omotesando Arcade where you can try the local seafood. There are models or pictures outside, so you can just point to what you want.

The particular restaurant we went to had an origami zoo by the cash desk.

Favorite Dish: Oysters with ramen noodles.

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Japanese cities sometimes have the distinction of having some kind of food or foods that they're famous for.
In particular, Hiroshima is likely most famous for its okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki which can be very loosely translated or described at best as a 'Japanese pancake' is cooked on a grill (like a crepe) and other ingredients are added to it while it is cooking. I took some pictures of the process below. The 'pancake' is
quite good and not overly filling as its primary ingredient is cabbage.

Okonomiyaki can be had throughout Japan. Hiroshima's okonomiyaki differs from others I've tried in that it is thinner, less filling (as far as the pancake part goes), and has noodles (yakisoba - fried buckwheat noodles) in it.

In order to find this location, ask hotel staff or an information desk for where to go to eat Hiroshima okonomiyaki. The restaurant we visited (Henkutsuya) was located near the Okonomiyaki haven. We opted to not to eat at the 'haven' as those places just didn't look that great. At street level downstairs we found this place. It was more presentable, seemed to cater better to families, and most importantly it was all NON-SMOKING.

A good precaution whenever going to a place like this however is to put your coats in plastic bags and tie them off so as to not let them get smoky from the grill smoke.

Favorite Dish: (see above). Also, worth mentioning, the restaurant that we went to was selling coke and other softdrinks for only 200 yen or so. That's not bad. Most restaurants usually sell the same thing for over 400 yen.

This is a hidden gem!!
They use fresh sea food from the local sea of Seto, local Hiroshima chicken and beef, pork from local Hiroshima as well as Miyazaki prefecture (famous for its pork), and create them into wonderful savory dishes! A wide range of shochu etc. to choose from to go with their ippin-ryori (Japanese-style tapas) made from the local produce, and they also have English menu.

During lunch time, they have a few lunch combos to choose from, which are also delicious and very reasonably-priced (550-1500yen). (Their Anago-meshi is the best.)

Nice relaxed atmosphere. Open on weekdays.

Favorite Dish: Charcoal-grilled anago (sea eel) on a bed of rice, Local small sardine dishes, Local tako (octopus) dishes, Fried oysters, Slow-cooked beef gristle, other charcoal-grilled dishes, Sashimi, and daily specials...

Okonomiyaki is like a thin pancake, with cabbage, ginger, noodles, egg and a host of other things to choose from. You’ll find no better place to sample okonomiyaki than in Hiroshima. Okonomi-mura has 3 floors of okonomiyaki restaurants packed into one place and you can’t wrong with any of them. You won’t be sorry for going there! If you’re like me, you’ll go there every night you’re in Hiroshima! The price is very affordable as well.

An icon of Hiroshima, Otis is a Mexican fusion restaurant operated by a lovely Japanese couple. Small and cosy, the restaurant presents a menu thats a change from most types of food found around Japan.

Round the back of theTokyu Hands department store, down a side street is the small jacket potato ‘restaurant’, Spud Love.
You can’t miss the place, it has a huge Union Jack painted on the wall.
Spud Love has 5 seats inside and some small seats outside on the kerb side (opposite the Rent-a-car office)
The place is run by Paddy a very friendly Brummie
He serves jacket potatos and nothing much else food wise!
Prices start at less than 300 Yen (about £1.50)
Open 11pm-2pm then 5pm-9pm selling spuds and becomes just a bar from 9pm-11pm
On the face of it eating jacket spud in a place run by an English bloke isn’t the most tradition Japanese past time but met some of the locals (those born and bred in the country and those who moved from England)
What started as a quick snack at 6pm turned out to become a night out which finished at around 11.

Favorite Dish: I had a ice spud with beef stew and a side order of mixed veg, cheap and filling.
Spud Love seems to be a popular place for school trips in the day time, giving the children a chance to try some English cuisine.

This place we went to on a whim. It served a ride pancake with noodles, veg and pork and with some weird sauce and spices on it. It was very weird looking even for japanese food.

I strongly suggest you run around Hiroshima yelling "weird pancake hoshii desu!" cause that makes total sense right.

We washed all this stuff down with beer after beer after beer.

BEER!

Favorite Dish: The weird pancake thing! And BEER!