Showa Retro Tavern Nonde Wasureru ka: an Okonomiyaki I Can’t Forget

Ebisu hides its best dinners behind the most unremarkable door in Tokyo: a seven‑storey office block with no glow and no hint of the tavern perched on its top floor. After you ride the tiny old lift up, a door with a sign reading “Shōwa Retro Teppan Sakaba Nonde Wasureru ka” appears, and it roughly translates to “Showa Retro Teppan Tavern: Drink and Forget… Will Ya?”, a name that sounds more like something an old guy in a trenchcoat would whisper to your ear at midnight than the name of a restaurant… I love it.

When you enter, the whole city rearranges itself around you. The light turns honey‑amber. The walls bloom with posters of beautiful strangers selling old dreams, and the warm iron griddle at the counter begins to hum in a way that feels startlingly like an invitation.

Once you are in, the evening doesn’t arrive so much as slip sideways into cinema. Beneath that glow, the walls deepen into the colour of an old shadow, and on them hangs a forgotten museum: glossy faded advertisements, kimono beauties, chrome‑toothed cola grins, all of them paused mid‑promise from a world that no longer exists. It is nostalgia dressed as clutter. It is history. It is, against all logic, gorgeous.

And at the heart of it all, under that warm glow, waits the true protagonist of the evening: a low, light-wood dining counter set with its built-in iron griddle, the teppan itself so clean it seems to wink beneath the bulbs. This is where destiny is made, and then eaten. Above, framed like a small shrine to refreshment, the Sapporo Beer lady looks down at you from her poster. Her eyes say order a mug. Her patience says do not dawdle, this iron is hot, and some promises keep only as long as the fire.

Sit close. That is a rule. In a proper teppan bar you do not admire dinner from a social distance; you perch close enough to feel the grate hum and to judge the chef for yourself. Mine moved like a veteran, strict, precise, redistributing cabbage as though it had personally wronged his lineage and now owed him something crisp.

You arm yourself first. Tonight the weapon of choice is a Nama Lemon Sour, a drink so unfailingly honest that if it could talk it would only whisper, “a real lemon lived here.” No syrup pretending to be citrus. Just cold, bright, refreshing truth, with a single drift of lemon floating like a small, smug moon in a glass. If beverages have personalities, this one is the quiet regular who never brags, keeps to its corner stool, and somehow is never once forgotten by the staff. That is the exact character I want on my side before battle.

Then the support act arrives: Yaki Poteto Sarada, grilled potato salad. Do not let the humble name fool you. It arrives looking innocent, and for three whole seconds I let it get away with it. Then the umami hits with the swagger of someone who knows, the instant they walk in, that they are the most interesting guest in the room. Cut in and the potato is soft and warm inside, but the crust around it is not soft at all: it is crisp, golden, and almost certainly a thin toasted shell of cheese. Was it really cheese? It tasted like it, though I was so busy letting my lemon sour get my taste buds ready that I forgot to actually look. Right at its heart hides a single leaf of perilla with a real kick to it. Not a strong kick though. Nothing dramatic, no scene, just the patient tap of a small pony asking for your attention before it lets that faint green snap do the talking. I have eaten salads with ambition before. This one has a career plan.

And then, the crown jewel. Osaka-style pork-cheese okonomiyaki. Even before my first bite, it insists on a pause for admiration. It is the culinary translation of a messy bedroom that somehow looks majestic: chaotic, overstuffed, absurdly certain of itself, the sort of dish minimalists would politely ban by decree. Cut the soft cabbage shell and molten cheese pours out like it had been holding its breath all evening. On top, a generous snowfall of katsuobushi sways in the steam, dancing its famous ghostly waltz, waving hello right before I devour it. I do not anthropomorphise food lightly. This dish made me consider it.

When I finally dig in, the first notes arrive like paperwork I suddenly understand: a sweet tang of sauce and mustard, a pairing I have watched pop up more and more lately, and I love it. The two go together like a hungry cat and the click that says the tuna is finally here. The tanginess of mustard cuts the sauce’s sweetness just enough that neither overstays its welcome. Then a crisp cabbage chorus steps in, and a batter cooked clean through with no raw whisper. Then comes the quiet genius of the thing. Ordering cheese on your okonomiyaki is an advanced move, the sort only a teppan bar’s oldest regulars, or a very clever cat, would master. The longer it rests on the hot iron, the more it evolves. It melts. It deepens. It grows those crisp, caramelised edges at its base, the secret collar that never makes it onto any menu, and one bite of that collar and I privately considered rising from my seat to applaud. But I changed my mind. Standing burns calories, and that is not why I hauled myself to the seventh floor.

This is the okonomiyaki equivalent of an old radio hit: simple on the first listen, already nostalgic by the second, and impossible to leave by the last verse. Had someone kept a running score of how good it gets, bite after bite, it would have run clean off the page long before the plate was empty.

And after you have polished off your okonomiyaki, here is a pro tip: the tavern keeps a free snack table of assorted little treats, Umaibo and the like (Umaibo are those savoury puffed-corn sticks out of the old corner shop), and you may help yourself to as many as you like. I tested the word unlimited, as any responsible cat would. Take it from experience: somewhere around my fifteenth snack, the very kind staff begin to watch me with a look that is neither disappointment nor appraisal… Just kidding. It is genuinely free, and the staff here are unfailingly kind.

Some nights you eat. Some nights you dine. But this night, I was devouring, almost inhaling, grilled goodies like a cat who just realized no one is watching the fish counter.

When I finally rise to go, the staff press a small parcel into my paw with a wink. A little goodbye for the road, they explain, and every guest leaves with one. I will not spoil the contents. Some treasures are meant to be unwrapped at the table, by the finder, and not described by a reviewer in cold print. All I will say is what I said to the beer lady on my way out: this tavern is named for drinking and forgetting, yet it handed me an evening I intend to remember on purpose.

“Nonde Wasureru ka” is not just a retro izakaya. It is a house that remembers how to be a house: warm, unhurried, and generous with its low light and its hot iron. If you want a night that feels like pulling an old cassette from beneath the bed, dusting it off, and finding the tape still turns perfectly, this is where the door is. Bring an appetite and a little patience for the iron. As for the parting gift, go and discover it yourself. I refuse to spoil secrets, even very good ones.

Address: 〒150-0013 Tokyo, Shibuya, Ebisu, 1 Chome−8−7 7F
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