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“When you visit Gindaco, spend some time watching the cooks make takoyaki before ordering, because it's an amazing free show. The shop has an industrial-sized takoyaki griddle with dozens of hot cast iron wells, each one about an inch and a half in diameter. The cook squirts the grill with plenty of vegetable oil. She dunks a pitcher into a barrel of pancake batter and sloshes it over the grill, then strews the whole area with negi, ginger, and huge, tender octopus chunks. Some of Gindaco's purple tentacles are two inches long. This cooks for a little while, then the cook tops off the grill with more batter until it's nearly full.
Up to this point, the process looks haphazard, but then she whips out the skewers. Using only the same slender bamboo skewers you'd use for making kebabs, she begins slicing through the batter in a grid pattern and forming a ball in each well. Somehow she herds this ocean of batter into a grid of takoyaki in a minute or two.
The takoyaki cost all of 500 yen, and the price includes a wooden serving boat that you can take home and reuse as a bath toy if you haven't gotten too much sauce on it. A Gindaco takoyaki is a brilliant morsel: full of flavor from the negi and ginger, crispy on the outside and juicy within. Takoyaki also stay mouth-searingly hot inside for longer than you can stand to wait, so be careful.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“It starts with a thwack, the sharp crack of hard plastic against a hot metal surface. When the ladle rolls over, it deposits a pale-yellow puddle of batter onto the griddle. A gentle sizzle, as the back of the ladle sparkles a mixture of eggs, flour, water, and milk across the silver surface. A crepe takes shape.
Next comes cabbage, chopped thin- but not too thin- and stacked six inches high, lightly packed so hot air can flow freely and wilt the mountain down to a molehill. Crowning the cabbage comes a flurry of tastes and textures: ivory bean sprouts, golden pebbles of fried tempura batter, a few shakes of salt, and, for an extra umami punch, a drift of dried bonito powder. Finally, three strips of streaky pork belly, just enough to umbrella the cabbage in fat, plus a bit more batter to hold the whole thing together. With two metal spatulas and a gentle rocking of the wrists, the mass is inverted. The pork fat melts on contact, and the cabbage shrinks in the steam trapped under the crepe.
Then things get serious. Thin wheat soba noodles, still dripping with hot water, hit the teppan, dancing like garden hoses across its hot surface, absorbing the heat of the griddle until they crisp into a bird's nest to house the cabbage and crepe. An egg with two orange yolks sizzles beside the soba, waiting for its place on top of this magnificent heap.
Everything comes together: cabbage and crepe at the base, bean sprouts and pork belly in the center, soba and fried egg parked on top, a geologic construction of carbs and crunch, protein and chew, all framed with the black and white of thickened Worcestershire and a zigzag of mayonnaise.
This is okonomiyaki, the second most famous thing that ever happened to Hiroshima.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“Whoooa! Red! Green! Yellow! Brown! Purple! Even black!
Look at all those bowls full of brilliantly colored batter!"
She used strawberries, blueberries, matcha powder, cocoa powder, black sesame and other natural ingredients to dye those batters. They look like a glittering array of paints on an artist's palette!
"Now that all my yummy edible paints are ready...
...it's picture-drawing time!"
"She twisted a sheet of parchment paper into a piping bag and is using it to draw all kinds of cute pictures!"
"You're kidding me! Look at them all! How did she get that fast?!"
Not only that, most chefs do rough sketches first, but she's doing it off the cuff! How much artistic talent and practice does she have?!
"All these cutie-pies go into the oven for about three minutes. After that I'll take them out and pour the brown sugar batter on top..."
"It appears she's making a roll cake if she's pouring batter into that flat a pan."
"Aah, I see. It must be one of those patterned roll cakes you often see at Japanese bakeries. That seems like an unusually plain choice, considering the fanciful tarts she made earlier."
"The decorations just have to be super-cute, too."
"OOOH! She's candy sculpting!"
"So pretty and shiny!"
That technique she's using- that's Sucre Tir¨¦ (Pulled Sugar)! Of all the candy-sculpting arts, Sucre Tir¨¦ gives the candy a glossy, nearly glass-like luster... but keeping the candy at just the right temperature so that it remains malleable while stretching it to a uniform thickness is incredibly difficult!
Every step is both delicate and exceptionally difficult, yet she makes each one look easy! She flows from one cutest technique to the next, giving each an adorable flair! Just like she insisted her apple tarts had to be served in a pretty and fantastical manner...
... she's even including cutesy performances in the preparation of this dish!”
― Yuto Tsukuda, ʳꪤΥ½©`¥Þ 29 [Shokugeki no Souma 29]

“Take one of the dishes you will be eating tonight, fritto misto. The old butcher who sold me the meat was most insistent that it should be cooked the old way---so brains, for example, are always poached in vegetables, then left to cool before being sliced and deep-fried in batter. But then you think, this batter is not so different from Japanese tempura, and tempura can be served with a sweet chile and soy dipping sauce, so why not make an Italian version of that, perhaps with balsamic vinegar from Modena instead of soy, and see what happens”
― Anthony Capella, The Food of Love

“Okonomiyaki, meanwhile, is to American pancakes what Japanese wrestling is to American wrestling. The basic batter contains flour and water, grated nagaimo (that big slimy yam again), eggs, and diced cabbage. You then augment this base by ordering little bits and nibbles a la carte to be added to the batter. We could not figure out the ordering system, but we listed off ingredients we liked and ended up with two pancakes' worth of batter teeming with squid, octopus, sliced negi, and pickled ginger. The waiter dropped off a big bowl of unmixed pancake fixings and a couple of spatulas and assumed we would know how to do the rest. Every time we did something wrong, he sucked in his breath (a very common sound in Japan, at least in my presence) and intervened. Every time we did something right, he gave the thumbs-up and a Fonzie-like grunt of approval.
Now that I've cooked two okonomiyaki and am certified by the Vera Okonomiyaki Napoletana Association, I can tell you how it's done. If your okonomiyaki has a large featured ingredient like strips of pork belly, set it aside to go on top; don't mix it in. Stir everything else together really well. Pour some oil onto the griddle and smooth it out into a thin film with a spatula. Dump the batter onto the griddle and shape it into a pancake about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. If you have pork strips, lay them over the top now like you're making bacon-wrapped meatloaf.
Now wait. And wait. And wait. If little bits of egg seep out around the edge of your pancake, coax them back in. It takes at least five minutes to cook the first side of an okonomiyaki. Maybe ten. Maybe thirty. If you're not hungry enough to drink a tureen of raw batter, it's not ready. Finally, when it's brown on the bottom, slide two spatulas underneath and flip with confidence. Now wait again. When the center is set and the meat is crispy, cut it into wedges and serve with okonomiyaki sauce, mayo, nori, and fish flakes. If you haven't had okonomiyaki sauce, it's a lot like takoyaki sauce. Sorry, just kidding around. It's a lot like tonkatsu sauce.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“The batter was crispy, like tempura, but it didn't have much flavor other than beer- which was fine, but not what he wanted. It added a malty bitterness that didn't balance right with the cheese. He wanted everyone to love these curds, not just beer fans. And it didn't have the crunch he wanted. It was too tender, which meant perhaps a batter wasn't the route to go. Maybe breadcrumbs would give him the texture and structure he craved. But the cheese- the cheese was perfect. Melty, stringy, yet still retaining a bit of the squeak that made fresh cheese curds so special. It would be easy enough to get the supplies from a local dairy or even the grocery stores. In Wisconsin, great cheese was easier to find than a bagel in New York.
He ate another one. The cheese itself was salty. What would work with that? Something with a little sweetness? Like a Wheat Thin or a graham cracker? He could mix crushed graham crackers with breadcrumbs for his next attempt.”
― Amy E. Reichert, The Kindred Spirits Supper Club