Okonomi-yummy at Pacific Social Club

Sho Foo Doh is go at Pacific Social Club. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

Sushi is the dish most readily associated with the Land of the Rising Sun, but okonomiyaki is Japan’s soul food.

Chef Fumio Tanga is from Hiroshima, a city synonymous with okonomiyaki (Japanese for “cook as you like it”), which features filling savoury pancakes stuffed with layers of meat, fish, white cabbage and other ingredients and garnished with chopped spring onions or a fried egg.

“Okonomiyaki is total beer food,” says Mr Tanga, who moved to the UK in 1996 and has lived in Hackney for 15 years.

Two years ago, after leaving his job in a record store, Mr Tanga set up a stall selling okonomiyaki dishes in Chatsworth Road Market.

“My grandfather had a sweet shop in Hiroshima when I was a kid,” he says, “and it was called Sho Foo Doh. The translation would be something like ‘Wind from the Japanese Pine Tree’. It’s quite poetic. In Japan the pine brings fortune, so people name their shops or businesses after pines quite a lot.

“The shop closed down when I was 10. When I was talking to my mum about maybe starting up a market stall, she said she still had the uniform my grandfather used to wear in his shop. She gave it to me and I wore it in the market. I called the stall Sho Foo Doh.”

The endeavour was a great success – so successful, in fact, that Mr Tanga has now done what any self-respecting street food vendor aspires to do and has secured a residency in the kitchen of the Pacific Social Club in Clapton three nights a week.

Mr Tanga’s signature dish is, of course, his savoury pancakes, but his menu also features new dishes each week. In addition to the pancakes, you can try pork belly soy noodles, mackerel in sour plum sauce, clams in garlic and sake.

Starters: £2- £6
Mains: £8-£11
Drinks: BYOB
Bookings: restaurant@pacificsocialclub.biz

Pacific Social Club
8 Clarence Road
Hackney
E5 8HB

Open Thurs, Fri, Sat weekly.