JoelF,

It is not surprising you are aware of what's happening on the bookstore front. Sorry to hear the new location is just a reduction in size of an existing bookstore.

Visiting Mitsuwa for a midweek mid-afternoon lunch, the tired feeling of Mitsuwa is all the more obvious. The flooring in the dining area was wearing thin. My chair's seat was not in great shape, either needing repair or replacement. Despite its' flaws, I like the open airy feel, which H-mart's food court doesn't have.

Have you been to Grand Mart on Touhy yet? If yes, what did you think?

Regards,

I did a very brief tour of Grand Mart on Touhy last Friday. There were people dressed in traditional Korean garments in the vestiblule.

The produce was pristinely fresh, as all such places are when they first open, and the variety was say half H-Mart.

The fish department had a quarter of the selections of H-M. All of it was very fresh. Noted prices near same. What was different here, was all the seafood was available to touch, poke, prod, and sneeze on. But, one could pick up the whole fish, smell the sea where it lived, and look it right in the eye before committing to buying it.

There is a dining area. Counter seating. What I saw coming out of the open kitchen looked good.

It still looks like Cub Foods though.

-ramon

Grand Mart on Touhy is a little out of the way for me -- I pretty much have to pass H-Mart to get to it (not necessarily, but that's one way to go). I'm more curious about the Korean signage with "Coming Soon" at the ex-Sports Authority on Milwaukee just north of Dempster that shares a building with Binny's.

bibi rose wrote:To me, cooking with sake is like cooking with wine. Sake is an artisanal product with all different grades and tastes and it will affect your cooking like wine. My impression is also like CrazyC said, mirin is mainly to add sweetness and glaze. As far as I know the mirin you buy at the grocery is basically an industrial product; nothing wrong with that. It's just all the same.

Quite a few recipes call for both sake and mirin.

We use Mitoku Organic Mikawa Mirin http://www.mitoku.com/products/mirin/mikawa_mirin.html .
This is totally different than commercial products and is what real mirin is like. Note: Current product in the US has 2% sea salt so it can be sold as a non-alcoholic beverage. A drum without salt was available about 2 years ago and I purchased over a gallon of the stuff from that drum. It is excellent but I don't know how the version with salt compares. WE did do a comparison to the Kikkoman product and thier was simply no comparison. Sort of like real Chinese wine to the cooking version. -Dick

JoelF wrote:I'm more curious about the Korean signage with "Coming Soon" at the ex-Sports Authority on Milwaukee just north of Dempster that shares a building with Binny's.

Yes, I've wondered about that too - looks like some sort of Korean food manufacturer/conglomerate logo like Hyundai or something...

Stopped by Mitsuwa for the first time today and had a wonderful time; we went straight for the sushi bar and got some inari and california rolls for Sparky and his little buddies who were with us. While there, I couldn't help but pick up a piece of wasabi tobiko, and an onigiri to compare with my homemade (for a novice, mine aren't too bad)

While the kids were scarfing that down, I went to Kayaba (I think) and got their kid's meal, which was: a little square of ground beef in gravy, not dissimilar to Swiss Steak, a little pile of cold mashed potato salad, two bites of fried chicken, a tempura shrimp, sweet cooked egg, and a flan. With a couple added shrimp, it was more than enough for my three hungry food explorers.

The grownups shared a meal similar to C2's above (I couldn't resist more fish eggs, particularly as elegant as those are) but with a soy-marinated HB egg (does that count as a Thousand-Year egg?) and a light soup with some kind of Ramen. The soup had three broth options - one of which I forgot, sorry - salt and miso. I got the recommended "salt" broth, which was kind of creamy - maybe salted milk?

At the counter were little cards with descriptions of the foods, and, to my delight, one directed you to log on to www.mitsuwa.net for recipes from the food court! Unfortunately, If there are recipes to be had, I couldn't find them...

HI Mhays,

Glad you enjoyed yourself at Mitsuwa.

The soup bases offered are soy sauce, salt, miso and spicy miso. At Erik M's suggestion I have been favoring the hot miso, which is full flavored and definitely not 'spicy' at least by my definition.

Regards,

Mhays wrote:At the counter were little cards with descriptions of the foods, and, to my delight, one directed you to log on to www.mitsuwa.net for recipes from the food court! Unfortunately, If there are recipes to be had, I couldn't find them...

I'm sure you read correctly, but try here.

-ramon

Mhays wrote:but with a soy-marinated HB egg (does that count as a Thousand-Year egg?)

Only if it looked like this:



or in a nicer arrangement



Incidentally, one of my favorite stick-to-your-ribs comfort foods growing up was the "Three Egg Congee" made with thousand year eggs, preserved duck eggs and regular chicken eggs slow cooked into a thick porridge and eaten with youtiao (fried dough sticks), roast duck and Chinese pickles washed down with sweet soy milk for Sunday brunch.