Hiroshima Okonomi Story Ekimae Hiroba

Hiroshima Okonomi Story Ekimae Hiroba is the city's most convenient introduction to its signature dish - an entire floor of okonomiyaki restaurants gathered into one bright, retro-styled hall a five-minute walk from Hiroshima Station. Occupying the sixth floor of the Hiroshima Full Focus Building, it packs around fifteen shops into a 1,300-square-metre space themed to look like a Showa-era shopping street, with painted shop signs and nostalgic lanterns setting the mood.

Like Okonomimura in the city centre, Ekimae Hiroba specialises in Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki: the layered version built on a thin crepe with a great heap of cabbage, bean sprouts, pork, egg and a bed of griddled noodles, all pressed together and lacquered with sweet okonomi sauce. Each of the shops here has its own small variations - some pile on extra noodles, some are famous for a crisper finish, some add oysters, squid or generous cheese - but every one cooks on an open teppan you sit right up against.

What sets this hall apart is pure convenience and comparison. Because so many respected shops sit side by side, it is the easiest place in Hiroshima to taste the dish without hunting across the city, and several stalls here (including long-running names that also trace back to the post-war food-cart era) draw genuine local loyalty rather than only tourists. You can wander the whole floor, read the photo menus, judge which griddle has the biggest local queue, and sit down within minutes.

The practical appeal is hard to overstate for travellers on the move. Hiroshima is a natural shinkansen stopover between Kyoto/Osaka and Kyushu, and many visitors have only a couple of hours between trains. Ekimae Hiroba lets you step off the platform, ride up one lift, eat a proper hot okonomiyaki, and be back on a bullet train without ever really leaving the station precinct. It is also a reliable rainy-day and late-evening option, since the hall stays open well into the night and is entirely indoors.

Ordering is straightforward. The default 'soba-niku-tama' - noodles, pork and egg - is what most people come for, and you eat it straight off the hotplate with a small spatula, Hiroshima-style, while it is still sizzling. Cold beer, highballs and soft drinks are on every counter. Prices sit in the same friendly 900-1,300 yen range as elsewhere in the city, so a filling meal with a drink stays well under 2,000 yen.

To find it, leave JR Hiroshima Station by the south (Shinkansen-side) exit and walk toward the Full Focus Building, a tall office tower a few minutes away; signs inside direct you to the sixth-floor okonomiyaki floor. Because it is so close to the station and the tram terminus, it pairs perfectly with an arrival or departure day, or with an afternoon spent at the nearby Peace Memorial Park before catching an evening train onward.