One thing I like to live close to, other than great restaurants, is a nice Asian supermarket. If that supermarket holds awesome Asian food court, even better. Here at Mitsuwa, it is a perfect match. They have lots and lots of Asian groceries, with emphasis on Japanese food, and yes, food court, also with emphasis on Japanese food!
The food court is behind the checkout lines, and it is pretty large. It is nice that they have allocated good amount of space for the food court, so that we are not all on top of each other. There are room to move around, but not so much with shopping carts or strollers. For those people with a lot to carry, it is safer to stay on the outer edges of the food court.
There are good amount of seating, although it can never be enough. Especially at a popular spot, there are always people looking around, waiting for a seat to become available. There are some nice table seating by the windows, I think these are the most popular ones, as they have the most space around them. Then there are smaller, a bit more crowded table seating in the middle, surrounded by counter seating.
The food vendors are lined up at the end of the wall. Most of them (if not all) will have some lines of people, but they move fast. Well, the lines for ordering part moves fast. After that, you have to wait for the food to get ready. They are all CASH ONLY so be prepared to bring some cash. They do have ATM machine if you forget to bring cash.
On this day, we walked around the food court, trying to decide on which place to order from. They all looked really good, but we finally decided with Wateishoku Kaneda. It is located next to the windows, all the way to the right.
The great thing about Japanese restaurants is that many of them have a display of their dishes, made with wax. They look so real… With them, you can see what the food is going to look like before you order. It makes it so much easier to decide on what you are going to have, unless of course, they all look good… After some review, we decided on Fried Oyster Plate ($9.50) and Pork Cutlet Don ($7.25) sets.
Fried Oyster Plate ($9.50) came with side of rice, miso soup, pickles, salad, edamame, three dipping sauces, and an orange wedge. I think getting all of these items for under $10 was a steal!
The three sauces were tonkatsu sauce, which is a bit on sweet side, tar tar sauce, and mustard sauce. They were all pretty good, and went really nice with the fried oysters and cabbage. The side salad of the day was a pasta salad. The portion was really small… It was ok, nothing special.
The fried oysters were pretty good, surprisingly. They were not large size, but at the same time, it came with five fried oysters, so I thought that was a good amount. They are made (fried) to order, so they were juicy and piping hot. It was a bit fishy to me, but still, it was good since they were just fried. My husband really enjoyed them.
Pork Cutlet Don ($7.25) comes with just miso soup and pickles. But, since it is a donburi, you are getting the rice under the pork cutlet. I always liked pork cutlet don, especially the ones that my mother makes. It brings me back fond memories of home.
The doburi was a good size, and it had generous portion of pork cutlet. It was not as good as my mother’s pork cutlet don (nothing will ever be as good as your mom’s home cooked meal, right?), but it was still very good. It was the perfect comfort food on a weekend. And again, you can’t beat the price. The seasoning was good too, not too sweet, not too salty. We were both very full after the meal. It was filling and tasty, comforting and relaxing. They have so many other offerings, we can go back for more and more…
They have a free water section next to the ordering/receiving counter. This is always helpful, so that you are not forced to buy a drink. The plastic cups are kind of small, so we made a couple of trips during our brunch, between our table and the water section. Sometimes, they don’t put the cups out, then you have to ask for them from the staffs at the Wateishoku Kaneda.
We enjoyed our brunch so much, we went back again for more shopping and brunch. This time, we went to Hannosuke, who specializes in tempura bowl (donburi). Here, they don’t have wax food display, but instead, photos of each dishes. This version works well too. They don’t have as many offerings as Wateishoku Kaneda, but they all looked really good regardless.
We ordered Edomae Tendon ($13.98) and Original Tendon ($9.98). They both came with miso soup and ginger. Edomae Tendon comes with anago fish, two shrimps, kakiage, soft boiled egg, seaweed, and one kind of vegetable, which was a sliced zucchini, all fried.
Anago is a salt-water eel, and it was a nice big size, going across from left to right, behind other tempura items. It was pretty good too. All the other item were nice, but they are more on the “soft” side, instead of crunchy kind. Especially the shrimps, which were kind of thin and long, when we pick it up with chopsticks, they didn’t stay straight. It was as soft as rubber, which was a bit disappointing. I like the kind of tempura that has a nice crunch to it on the outside, and soft in the inside.
Original Tendon comes with white fish, two shrimps, soft boiled egg, seaweed, and vegetables, which were a sliced zucchini, eggplant, and mushroom, all fried. They were all good, I felt like I got more out of it than the Edomae Tendon. I liked all the vegetable tempura. The white fish was about half the size of anago tempura, but it was really nice and tasty.
The sauce on the donburi was rather sweet, much sweeter than I expected. It wasn’t bad, but it was kind of overpowering a bit. The fried egg was nice, cooked just right to give us the egg porn. Another interesting item on the donburi was the seaweed. It was just half way tempura-ed, providing interesting mix of texture. At the first glance, I thought the bowls were a bit small, but after eating them, we were pretty full. A donburi with rice can really fill you up. We were happy with the food, and with the price. They also have tempura and soba sets, I would like to try them too.
Before leaving Mitsuwa, we stopped at a sweet shop next to exit/entrance, Kai Sweets. I have never bought anything here before, but they certainly pulled me in with beautiful, colorful, tasty looking sweets. I liked how they have the window showcase up front, not next to the cashier. You can really look at them and see if there is anything you want to buy, without feeling the pressure from the staff. They have all sorts of cakes, macarons, cream puffs, etc.. And they take credit card (with minimum charge of $5).
If you buy something that is in the showcase, a staff will come out from the back, and put them in a bag or box, or a tray if you are going to eat-in. They do have a nice sized seating area for those who decides to eat there. And, what’s more, they don’t just serve sweets, they had few “real” food like curry rice and omu-rice (omelet rice), which was a real surprise to me. The prices were really good too.
Since we just had lunch, we were looking to get some sweets to take home with. We had cravings for cream puff (after looked at their awesome looking cream puffs in the showcase). They had vanilla, green tea, and black sesame flavors. We were thinking of getting one of each, but then, I spotted their mini-cream puffs ($5). It came in a plastic cup, which reminded me of Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts. They are assorted flavors – so you get all three flavors in a cup, which was awesome!
When opened the cup for our afternoon snack. There were 8 mini-cream puffs in it, with three vanilla, two black sesame, and three green tea flavors. I am not sure if all of them comes with 8 puffs, or maybe depending on the size, if they can fit three flavors of each in the cup, then maybe you get 9 puffs?
Anyways, getting 8 mini-cream puffs for $5 is a bargain! And they were all very good. The vanilla custard ones was nice and creamy, sweet and heavenly. The green tea had a good flavor of the green tea, without being too sweet. The black sesame was interesting, I think it was my very first black sesame cream puff that I have ever tasted. It was not overly sweet, and had a good sesame flavor, nutty and a bit earthy.
And, guess what, we could not resist getting the regular sized cream puffs either… So, we bought one of each ($2.50/cream puff). I liked the size, they were pretty nice, large size. I would say between medium and large. And the price is a great steal for this size. The outer puff shell was airy, light, crispy, and sweet. The filling was really nice, good amount of filling in it to really enjoy the flavors.
The cream puffs were heavy with the fillings, which is always a plus. The shell was strong enough to hold the fillings without getting soggy, but at the same time, not too strong so that it gets tough to eat. They did a pretty good job! It certainly took care of our cream puff cravings for a while…
Even though they were good, and came at the right price, they still did not become my favorite cream puff. I still love the cream puffs from Beard Papas in Japan (you can read about it here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/beard-papas-shimbashi/) but since I can’t go to Japan so easily just for cream puffs, Kai sweets will serve me well… I would like to try some other offerings that they have as well.
I think the grocery shopping trip to Mitsuwa, with weekend brunch will become our routine for a while. All the Japanese groceries that I need and want, and good, affordable, comforting Japanese food and sweets… What a perfect combination!
Mitsuwa Marketplace – 595 River Rd, Edgewater, NJ 07020