A note on the words: monja (or monjayaki) is a griddle-cooked batter dish from Tokyo’s old shitamachi neighborhoods — thinner and runnier than its cousin okonomiyaki, cooked right on the table’s iron griddle (teppan) and eaten straight off it with a small metal spatula. Chanja is spicy marinated cod innards, and choregi salad is a Korean-style greens salad tossed in a sesame-soy dressing — both borrowed here from Korean izakaya cooking. Otoshi is the small appetizer you’re charged for automatically when you sit down; it’s the cover charge, not a scam. Karaage is Japanese fried chicken, and takowasa is raw octopus tossed with wasabi. Tenkasu is crunchy leftover bits of deep-fried tempura batter, a common monja topping. Mentaiko is spicy marinated cod roe.
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Roppongi Monja 4RO on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. This time it is a monjayaki place in Roppongi, “Roppongi Monja 4RO.” Looking it up, it seems to have been here since around 2021. I had no idea. Standing in front of the shop — ah, I see. So the site of Mifune (in Japanese), the old set-meal place built around Toshiro Mifune, had turned into a monja shop! They seem to have taken the place over as it stood and kept the Japanese look of it. I never noticed at all.
You order by reading a QR code and tapping away on your own phone. I started ordering a la carte, more or less at random!
The first thing I ordered was chanja! I picked it thinking it would come out quickly, and sure enough it came out quickly^^
And then the salad, vegetables first.
Somehow, choregi and chanja together give the place the feel of a Korean restaurant^^
The seafood platter! I ordered it thinking I would eat it before the monja.
The butter in the middle sits in dashi, and the idea seems to be that you lay down oil and butter, grill the seafood on top of that, and dip it in this at the end. So, onto the griddle it goes. The squid — ah! It is cut a little fine, so it falls apart, which is a shame, but the red shrimp is straightforwardly good!
Then, arriving late, the karaage that comes as the otoshi. You can choose it with or without sansho, and everyone took it with.
It is, well, ordinary karaage, but it is really quite good.
And after the seafood I asked for oysters as well.
They are done in butter, so you grill them much the same way as the seafood platter just now.
The grilled vegetables are on the same butter-and-dashi base! All of it the same!
Octopus has gotten expensive, has it not. It used to be so much cheaper. Bad news for octopus lovers! But I eat it anyway.
Grill it until it turns crisp and it becomes the finest drinking snack!
So, the first thing I ordered was the 4RO monja. My thinking was no more than: it is the first one, so the one with the shop’s name on it is probably the way to go.
The idea is that once the place fills up you make it yourself, but the first one they made for us. This is where you have to learn properly! Chop the cabbage fine, spread it out nicely, and drop in the batter!
And then — in goes rice, of all things lol
Reading the description more carefully, it says you add cheese and rice to the rich cream and eat it like a risotto.
What comes out really does have a risotto feel to it!
Putting the rice in makes it suddenly much more risotto-like, and the volume goes up all at once! Carbs on carbs!!
The karaage that came as the otoshi was good, so I ordered more. I do wonder whether they put just one piece out as the otoshi precisely because they are confident about it lol I walked right into the plan and ordered another round^^ Then again, this karaage really is good.
The okonomiyaki is made in the kitchen and brought out to you finished.
I could never get an okonomiyaki to look this neat either, so I am happier having it done for me!
There are a lot of unusual ones on the list, so I thought I should have at least one plain monja: I took the plain one, added pork as a topping, and made it an orthodox pork-and-mentaiko monja. This time we made it ourselves.
Yes, I think it is coming out looking about right.
Delicious! It had been a while since I last had monjayaki, and it goes so well with a drink! And gathering around an iron griddle keeps the conversation going.
So, this time I ate monjayaki in Roppongi! It is galling that I never realized there was a shop this close by! If it is this easy to come and eat here, I should have come much sooner. Now that I know about it, I think I will come back for monja next time around. I wanted the anko-maki, but I had already filled up, so next time I will eat it earlier!
Roppongi Monja 4RO (Monjayaki / Roppongi Station, Nogizaka Station, Azabu-juban Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
