Wheat batter loosened with dashi, squid chopped small and stirred through it. The batter goes onto a purpose-built griddle and is pressed hard from above and below, cooking in one shot under compression rather than being turned. What comes off is thin, flat, and chewy, with the squid distributed all the way through.

It is not okonomiyaki. It is not trying to be okonomiyaki either, and the difference in method is total: one is built up in layers on an open surface, while the other is squeezed flat between two hot plates.

The version most people mean is in the basement of the Hanshin department store at Umeda, which has been selling it since the store opened in 1957. Snack Park, the standing food hall it sits in, opened in 1978. The stall reportedly sells more than ten thousand of these a day.

You are handed it folded in half and wrapped in a sheet of paper, and you eat it standing up, with your hands, in a department store basement, in a queue. That is the correct way and there is no alternative provided. I stood in the line for a while watching people eat, and it struck me as one of the least ceremonious food traditions I have ever seen protected this carefully.