Robatayaki

Robatayaki, Japanese for fireside cooking, grills food, traditionally seafood and vegetables, at varying speeds over hot charcoal on a wide, flat, open hearth in the style of an irori, distinguishing it from cooking over a shichirin or other charcoal brazier. The style originated among fishermen in northern Japan's Hokkaido, who cooked communally around a hearth and later adapted the technique to charcoal cooked in stone boxes aboard their boats; after a government campaign promoted Hokkaido's rustic culture, robatayaki spread nationally, with the first dedicated restaurant opening in Sendai and more than ten thousand robatayaki restaurants operating across Japan by 1965. In a robatayaki restaurant the grill typically sits centrally, either as a hearth in a sunken pit as in the traditional irori or on a raised dais, with customers seated around it in what functions as an izakaya, a Japanese drinking establishment.