A note on the words: monjayaki, shortened to monja, is a very loose savory batter poured onto a hot griddle at your table and eaten straight off the iron with a small metal spatula; it stays runny rather than setting into a pancake. The dike mentioned below is the ring of chopped cabbage and other solid ingredients you build on the griddle to hold the liquid batter in while it cooks. Okonomiyaki is its thicker, pancake-shaped relative. Mentaiko is cod roe cured with chili. Shiso is a fragrant green herb leaf, sometimes called perilla. A highball is whisky with soda.
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Tsukishima Monja Sankyu Ueno Main Store on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. So, this time it was going to be drinking from midday! I headed for a serious Chinese restaurant only to find it closed that day!! What terrible timing! So we went into the monjayaki place right across from it instead. Come to think of it, was there a restaurant here before? It may well be new. The name is “Tsukishima Monja Sankyu Ueno Main Store.” If you can eat Tsukishima monja in Ueno, that is a fine thing!
Grilled eel monja — 2,068 yen
Mentaiko and rice cake monja — 1,738 yen
Pork belly, garlic chives and egg monja — 1,628 yen
There are some monja I do not quite understand, like the grilled-eel one, ha.
Part of me feels those two would taste better eaten separately, but this sort of inventive monja seems to be in fashion lately. Well, if you were eating it every day I suppose you would want the unusual varieties, but when you only have it once in a while, the orthodox versions are the ones you want!
First, a highball!
We cook on this griddle!
I asked the staff, and they said that at this place they basically do not cook it for you. Let us manage on our own. ^^
No matter what anyone says, I end up ordering it, ha.
Thinking of it as half a tomato, 638 yen is on the pricey side! An entirely ordinary tomato.
1,700 yen, ha. Mentaiko, shiso and butter monja!
Cooking monja is far easier than okonomiyaki. Grill the solid bits, chop them up with the spatula, build a dike (in Asakusa they apparently do not bother, ha), pour the liquid in slowly, mix, and you are done.
Like this, and then it becomes this.
Right, that is good. This is monja as monja should be. It hits the exact spot where you think, this is the flavor I wanted, ha.
The unusual versions are fine, but this flavor really is the one that goes with a drink.
This one is orthodox monja too.
Do not forget to cook the pork through properly before you make it, ha. This one goes with a drink as well, and it is seriously good!
So then: these are inbound-tourist prices, but it is good and I think that is fine! Ueno is a town where places like this and old-school places sit side by side. I do hope it does not end up centered on inbound tourists the way Tsukiji and Toyosu have. Since eating monja in Ueno while you are already there beats making a special trip to Tsukishima, a place like this opening is very welcome. Duck in, have a highball, share one monja, and move on — that might be the best way to use it.
Tsukishima Monja Sankyu Ueno Main Store (Monjayaki / Ueno-okachimachi Station, Okachimachi Station, Ueno-hirokoji Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
