Eating at the #1 GREATEST Japanese Grocery Store in Southern California

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Join me as I explore the aisles filled with exotic snacks, authentic ingredients, and mouthwatering Japanese cheap eats that won’t break the bank.

#japanese #japanesefood #california

Places I went to:
Tokyo Central Irvine
Tokyo Central Costa Mesa

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Hey guys, it’s Mike and in this video I am in Orange County, California trying out the most popular Japanese grocery store. And this place has it all from a hot fresh food bar to sushi, sashimi, poke bowls. They even sell incredible ramen that you can just take home, heat up, and eat. And before diving into that Japanese food adventure, a little Japanese snack time from the sponsor of this video, Tokyo Treat and Sakuro. As always, Sakuro first because that’s what a tea is. This month’s theme is holidays in Japan. Winter is like one of the most magical times to be in Japan. I can attest. You get a booklet introducing you to every single snack in the box. Where is it from? Little background about the snack makers. And this box is full of traditional, artisal, authentic Japanese snacks. Here’s my tea. This looks like roasted tea. Going to make some tea first. Never a bad sip of tea from Japan. Ding to try this matcha mochi. Mochi and chi. That’s one of the best combos on this planet. Shrimp crackers. These are some of the best things in the snack world. Kid you not. Look like little Cheeits. It tastes like that awesome umami flavor from the head of the prime. That’s what these taste like. If you see these anywhere, get them. That’s probably one of the best snacks I’ve had ever. These are cheese cashew nuts. Cashew with a crunchy outer cheesy shell. This month’s box is legit. And besides all the snacks and teas you get in this Aorokco box, every month you also get a table wear item. And this month, oh, look at this cute little plate. What I love about this company is that they work with local snack makers. And some of these snack makers been making snacks for over a hundred years. So you are really getting a taste of culture and tradition in every single box. And jumping on to the Tokyo Treat Box. So this is a box of fun exclusive Japanese snacks. And this month’s theme is snack in Wonderland. Of course comes with a booklet tells you about all the snacks, really interesting tidbits about Japanese culture. And these are exclusive premium snacks sourced locally in Japan. It always includes limited edition items like this this raspberry almond Kit Kat. I feel like they’re just endless. Like literally endless flavors of Kit Kats from Japan. And whatever flavor they say on the bag, it tastes exactly like that. Raspberry almond. Delicious. Oh, check this out. This looks good. Salad potato chips. It tastes like vinegrett. That’s probably my favorite way to eat salad. There’s also limited edition ramen. This is a yaki soba. And I love the mission of this company, which is for you to be able to experience Japanese culture through the medium of snacking right in the comfort of your own home. For me, the best way to explore different culture is really just taking a bite out of it, you know. So, if you’re interested at all about Japanese culture or you like Japanese snacks, or you like snacks in general, I would highly recommend checking out these snack boxes. Also, it’s the holiday season. I’ve actually got this for some of my friends for the holidays. I know they’re going to love it. So, if you want to give it a try, go to my link down below. Use my promo code dumpling and you’ll get $5 off your first Sakurico box or $5 off your first Tokyo Treat box. [Music] Hey guys, Mike Chin here in Orange County, California. Whenever I’m traveling around, I love going to local grocery stores, especially Asian ones. And this place, I think it just opened. Welcome to Tokyo Central. This is a really new Japanese grocery store, and it is quite early in the morning. So, let’s go see if we can find some breakfast. As soon as I walk in. Yeah, I smell food. There’s definitely food here. Oh, this is actually a really good deal for coconut juice. This stuff is usually like 3, four bucks. Yeah, $1.99 is a phenomenal deal. Ingredients for shabu, there’s pokey, there’s ooni. Oh, there’s a lot of ooni for 10 bucks. Wild Mexico uni. I never had that before. Tons of sashimi. Oh, look at this. Freshly made rice balls. There’s salmon. There’s ramen egg. Teriyaki, shrimp, tempura, spicy tuna miso. Let’s get a couple strawberry mochi. Oh man, check this out. Oh, this looks beautiful. Assortment of sushi that goes from $4, which are these veggie ones, to $17, which are these beautiful Oh, look. seared salmon. Oh, seared scallop. Oh man, that’s a tough decision. You know what? I got to do the spicy seared salmon. Let’s try their egg salad sandwich. They got fruit sandwiches as well. This is the choco cream strawberry. Oh, they got a hot food bar. What? Well, there’s two of them. Hot bar and a chill bar. Yeah, this is exactly what I was smelling when I walked in. So for soup, there’s egg flour, miso, Japanese hot and sour soup, some shrimp tempura, mincchi katsu. So mincchi katsu, this is ground beef, pork katsu, potato coette, some taco yaki. You know, I get a couple of takoyaki. What? Look at this shrimp shomai. Spicy shrimp shomai. There’s ragu skewers, spicy garlic chicken wings, kurag. And there’s green beans, fries, sweet and sour pork. I think I’m good with that. There’s actually so much sushi here. Oh, they sell a little rotating sushi kit. There’s just mounds of different bento boxes. Like just so much different varieties of food. So this is the cold bar. I mean, it says chilled bar, but a lot of the food is hot, too. I love love love grilled mackerel. And this is all freshly grilled right here. Chicken and root vegetables. That looks good, too. What is this? This is um fried mackerel. Take a little fried mackerel, too. So, this is salmon collar. Heck yeah. So, this section is just tons of seafood. Grilled chicken meatballs. It looks like a little konomayaki. There’s also fried rice and yaki soba. This section here, Japanese wagu. And this is the jewel right in the middle. They ate five. There’s also a bunch of sweets. Oh, there’s ramen. There’s ramen. There’s curry. Oud. I wish I had a microwave. I think this is good for breakfast. Actually, got to get a drink. Great Fanta. I’m not a big fan of the sun, but in the shade, the temperature is really nice. So, got a lot of good stuff for breakfast. I just remembered there is a microwave oven at my hotel. So, maybe I’ll grab some uh stuff like the ramen and the curry bowl and I’ll eat it for lunch or dinner back at the hotel. Oh man, this smells so good. Fresh everything. Croette, tempura, chicken wings, somai, takoyaki, itadaki mas. And honestly, every single grape drink from Japan is going to be good. Oh, it’s absolutely delicious. Golden grape fant. Let’s just start with the tempura cuz I don’t want this to get cold. Tempura sauce. Let’s try this on its own first. M fresh shrimp tempura that just delightful. Also $10 a pound. Not too bad on price. Drop little tempura sauce on the shrimp. I just realized this is katu sauce. Not tempura sauce. I actually forgot to grab the tempura sauce. But you know what? Katu sauce on a tempura shrimp. Not bad. Really good. So good. You put the whole tail in your mouth. That’s such a nice tender shrimp inside, too. Next up, let’s try this menchi katsu. Oh, that’s so nice and crispy. This is delicious. That’s really good. Nice and crunchy outer shell inside. Nice and meaty. And this one add some katu sauce to it. Amazing. Meaty, crunchy, perfectly fried. What else do you need? Oh, this is one of my favorite things ever. Potato cricette. It’s like a fancier just overall better hash brown. Just going to go ahead and add some katu sauce to this as well. I love this thing because it’s just the most perfect textual contrast. Golden crispy on the outside, mushy and delicious inside. Basically a Japanese hash brown, but so much better. This thing looks so enticing. A sai just covered in chili sauce. That’s good. There’s a shrimp on the top. Plump shrimp inside as well. Good heat on that hot oil. Yeah. So far, I’m loving the hot bar. Takoyaki. Takiyaki for me, I feel like it’s something that I don’t crave until I see it, but then when I see it, that takoyaki song just pops in my head, then I really want one. It’s also one of those foods that I I really don’t want to eat a lot of them. So, it’s nice to be able to just get two. I’ll tell you, this is not bad takoyaki. I feel like this is going to be really good. The person before me got like a whole entire box of these things. So, this is their chili garlic wings. That’s really good. This thing is a wami powerhouse. If I was just about to go home and relax for the day or watch a movie or a game, I would get a whole box of this too and take it with me. Still retains a little crunch even with all that sauce on the outside. It’s definitely spicy, a little sweet, and just so much umami. like so much. These are incredibly incredibly flavorful chicken wings. Actually way better than I thought. I also got this. This is their kurag cooked in some kind of house sauce. This is good, too. Less intense than the wings, but probably just as much umami. I like the wings better, but if you want a non-spicy option, these are excellent. My other box, this is going to be really exciting. Yaki sobba. Okonomyaki. By the way, these two go very well together. Salmon color. A ginormous grilled mackerel and a fried mackerel. Let’s just try this first. Fried mackerel. I usually like grilled mackerel more. Like I love grilled mackerel, but let’s try a fry. A little tough. Little tough little doughy. Yeah, they definitely fried the moisture out of this thing. Let’s try this though. The grilled version. Oh my gosh. I think this is going to be awesome. You can see all that beautiful oil and juice gathering on the surface. Perfect. What I love about macro is the fact that you really don’t need anything but a bit of salt. The macro is so full of delicious fat. It already has such a wonderful umami to it. And this one is absolutely freaking perfect. Tender, juicy. Every bite you’re getting so much of that nice fat and so much umami. The skin is nice and toasty, too. But look at this, man. This is just all fatty juice right here. That is so good. This is perfectly cooked. Oh, so delicious. Let’s chase it with some of the yaki soba. Good texture noodles with that really distinct, very nice worester sauce flavor. Okonomyaki is typically a very dense Oh yeah, this this one looks dense. Okay, this this might not be good. Okay, it’s definitely dry. I mean, they try to add juice to this by of course adding sauce and like a thin little layer of what looks like cheese on top. Yeah, I would say skip this next time. That’s not my favorite. Also, this thing is hefty, too. So, that one okonomayyaki probably cost me a lot of money. This I think is going to be awesome. Salmon collar. Around the collar, you’re going to find some of the most tender, juicy bits of meat. Oh, so good. The fat content in the salmon collar would 100% give the mackerel run for its money. The meat here is 10 out of 10 tender. Tender, fatty, is beautifully grilled, so you got that nice smoky flavor as well. Fish collar is one of the greatest eats in the seafood kingdom. And this is absolutely beautifully made. Wow, this is good. Yeah, I think just with the macro and the salmon collar and some yaki soba already such a phenomenal breakfast. And speaking of fatty fish, seared salmon. I truly think salmon’s one of those fish. It’s better seared because there’s so much nice fat content in salmon. When you sear it, you’re just sizzling up pure flavor. Well, when I was at the cashier, they gave me some soy sauce and hopefully wasabi. Look at that. Look how beautiful that is. Gorgeous sear on top. Dunk it into the wasabi and soy sauce. And wow, the words melt in your mouth. Doesn’t even do this justice. That salmon absolutely evaporates as soon as it enters your mouth, leaving behind just a beautiful fatty, smokeoky umami trail that will absolutely shock you. M. That is such good salmon. I wonder if this place has like a discount later tonight if it doesn’t sell everything out. I bet it does. Yeah, this is so good. Also, whenever I go to Japanese supermarkets, I always get the egg sandwich just to see if we can find something that’s kind of comparable to what you get in Japan. This one is made with milk bread. The crust is still on the sandwich. Let’s try it. I’m always hopeful. Okay, right away, the bread feels a lot denser and heavier than the bread they use in Japan. It’s close. This is not bad. Really rich and creamy and eggy with a hint of sweetness. I think the texture of the egg sandwich in Japan is better, but flavor-wise, it’s pretty darn close. This is not a bad egg sandwich. Plus, you know what was good about this egg sandwich? They actually give you, and this is not something you see in a lot of Japanese supermarkets, they actually give you a lot of egg salad. This a good egg sandwich. How much was this? Six bucks. Not bad. The Japan one’s a little sweeter, which I feel like makes it taste better. And the egg salad in Japan is is more creamy. But I really do like the flavor of this egg salad. Let’s move on to this. So, this is a spicy tuna miso oni. Still nice and toasty, crunchy seaweed. M. I like it. This is delicious. They definitely put a lot of spicy tuna in here. The tuna is flavored very, very well. My biggest problem with Oni Gary is that sometimes the filling isn’t able to carry the whole rice ball. Not the case here. Here they actually season the seaweed as well. So, the seaweed is salty, too. The tuna is perfect. The rice is delicious. I really like this rice ball. And I’m glad I got two of them. This is the um Oh, a tama. A ramen egg on. What will they think of next? Oh, one bite in it. I still haven’t bit into the egg yet. This one is not as good. The tuna one, every bite I took, there was tuna. There was flavor. This one, I haven’t even got to the egg. It is a yummy egg. And I do feel like the ramen egg goes very well in oni. It is delicious, but the spicy tuna one in my opinion far more superior. That was a nice savory Japanese breakfast. Let’s try this out. Fruit sandwiches, of course, another thing that Japan is absolutely known for. And this is fresh strawberries and choco cream. Again, a milk bread. It’s so good. The choco cream is good. The strawberry is juicy and sweet and tingy. The bread is light and soft. I would go and get this again. This might be one of my favorite things today is this fruit sandwich. This is 100% I recommend. Wow, that cream is so light. If this bread could be just be a tiny bit softer, this will be a solid solid 10 out of 10. I think they also make their own mochi in house. Oh, it’s so soft. Oh, it’s so yummy. Strawberry mochi. Yeah, I can tell this is fresh. M. Not as good as a strawberry sandwich, but not a bad strawberry mochi. This is a really nice Japanese grocery store. I think later for lunch, they have another location that has a food court inside. So, we’ll go check that out. [Music] Yeah, this grocery store has got a ginormous section of food as well. Look at this giant assortment of sushi. There’s pokey here. I mean, just a ton of sushi and rolls and sweet potatoes. There’s a hot bar as well with pretty much the same stuff. Oh, they got a whole Hawaiian section here, too, with local Hawaiian snacks. Okay, so I think they used to have like a ramen bar in house, but I think it’s gone now. You know what I’m going to do? I’m just going to grab some of the microwave food and take it home and eat it. I do want to try their in-house ramen red tonatu ramen spicy. Let’s get this. Wow. Let’s get their map tofu, though. Look at this. This is all mochi right here. Oh, they got a sear scallop and salmon platter. That’s even better than what I got. I think food-wise, this location might be better. All right, back in the hotel room. Let’s check out this mop. Let’s hopefully just pop this in the microwave. This thing smells so good. Oh my gosh, look at this. So, this is multi-layered. I think the rice Yep. The rice is in the bottom. So, you just Oh, yeah. This thing smells absolutely perfect. Looks really good, too. Thick, meaty, big chunks of tofu. It smells peppercorny and spicy. [Music] I think the texture is perfect. The tofu is beautiful, silky and delicate. Tons of meat in here. Tons of sauce. My only complaint is too sweet. I think the spice level is perfect. I think the numbuminess is phenomenal. Really good satan flavor. It’s just about 50% too sweet for me. Other than that, this is a phenomenal map to I mean, some people probably like it sweet. I don’t know. Yeah. Besides the sweet thing for me, this is spot on authentic mafa tofu and for $7.99. Sweet or not, this is really good deal. You get a lot of food in this little box. So, this is the other thing I want to try. The poke bowl. So, $14.99. I think a little cheaper than a typical Poké Ball you’ll get at a poke restaurant. But here’s the thing. This is a lot of poke. Look at this. This is spicy rainbow pokeball. So, I’m getting tuna and salmon. This is a lot of fish. Look at this. That’s a lot of fish. You typically would never get this much fish at a typical pokey place. So, let’s try it. [Music] Oh, that tuna is so buttery. The sauce is creamy. It’s absolutely perfect. Like a little crab salad, too. The seaweed salad. I bet this salmon is going to be even better. The salmon is better. Salmon is just fattier, more melt in your mouth. If you want that melt in your mouth, buttery texture, that’s all samurai. The sauce in the fish is phenomenal. It’s so delicious. Creamy little sweet, very spicy. This is an absolute amazing box of poke. $14.99. Oh, my ramen’s ready. $14.99. I think it’s a great deal. All right, I’ve been dying to try this. This is their spicy tonkatu ramen. I should have took the egg out before I put it in the microwave. I absolutely destroy the egg. Looks like a really good bowl of ramen. Like professionally made ramen shop type of ramen. Thin pieces of fatty chashu. Some bamboo. Thick curly noodles. Some chili on top as well. That’s not bad. It’s a thick, really rich porky broth. The noodles are nice and chewy. The chili that’s in here really makes a difference. Oh man, you can definitely taste the heat. That chashu is so tender. That is such a tender piece of chashu from a bowl of microwave ramen. This is a thick, thick, rich broth. I know I said this before, but this is the perfect kind of broth for these thick curly noodles that’s just gripping so much. It’s almost like a sauce. Look at this. The noodles are gripping so much of the broth when it’s coming up. Is this one of the thickest tonkatus I’ve ever had? Oh, it’s so thick. It’s so thick and rich. That’s a lot of delicious fat in here. I think this is a phenomenal bowl of ramen, especially something you get from a grocery store you stick in a microwave. I will 100% keep this in the fridge to satisfy my ramen cravings. This is excellent ramen. How much is this? This is $13.99. I’m telling you, I think $13.99 is not a bad price for this bowl of ramen. That’s really good bowl of ramen. I’m shocked by how good it is. Especially the chashu. The chashu is absolutely phenomenal. It’s so tender. What a great grocery store. I think the prices in general at that store is really good. I think the prices beats the Matsuas that I’ve been to and definitely the Japanese supermarkets around Seattle. I think this is a very fair price Japanese grocery store. Man, you guys in this area are pretty lucky at this place. I would go and eat lunch there all the time. Glad I was able to finally try this place. And that wraps up, of course, another fun food day here in the Los Angeles Orange County area. As always, thank you all so much for watching. until we eat again.