As if all of a sudden, Hong Kong has gone from uncomfortably humid and sticky to freezing cold in the space of about a week. And no cat. 8 typhoons this year! What is going on with your weather, HK? Either way the temperature has caught me a little of guard and i've come down with a cold. After a shit night out in Soho the night before, I was grumpy and in need of some serious gastronomical pick-me-up. I had been meaning to go into MIKAWAYA in Hung Hom for ages. The good reviews on openrice and a couple of personal recommendations led me towards this fairly innocuous looking japanese place. Seating about 15 the place is small, but the staff are extremely friendly (and actually japanese) and the food is damn cheap. This place has some serious atmosphere though. Located in a grungy street in Hung Hom with not much going on, this tucked away little eatery is a real gem. I was dining alone (how sad), so only really had the chance to try one dish. The menu is fairly extensive, with different types of udon, japanese curry rice, tonkatsu, ramen and tempura dishes on offer, as well as a small selection of fresh cut sashimi. I felt like something a little spicy to clear my sinuses so I called upon a trusty bowl of Curry Udon, which was my favorite dish when I was staying in Tokyo. Nice bits of potato and thick chewy udon (I think they make it themselves!), with a nice spicy and thick japanese style curry sauce. For $38 it's a bargain considering how huge it is, and free green tea as well. While i'm tentative about giving Mikawaya a perfect score having tried only one dish, they've definitely got me going back. Tomorrow in fact, for lunch. And then maybe for dinner. Probably the day after that too.

This is a supplementary comment for Mikawaya regarding the different type of cream provided in the restaurant. It's the yellow type with a few sweet corn and a few slices of veggies, plus I believe a few chunks of chicken or hash browns, which you could see from the photographs provided by other food commentators. It's called "corn cream" in Japan.

The corn cream I just referred to could also be prepared by using:

There is a very interesting response to my comment so I'd recommend you checking it out if you have time. Make sure you check out the favorite restaurants that particular commentator recommends, namely, Mikawaya and another related shop. The shops not recommended were equally interesting, conveniently situated near Mikawaya. You may also find the food reviews in that account, or lack of reviews, interesting.

I stand corrected by the kind commentator, according to him, it's apparently about HK$30 per pack. What I forgot to tell you was that there were 10 cubes per pack. Preparation time depends on your cooking skill. I can't see how the small burgers or hash browns or the small amount of veggies scattered inside the stew would pump up the cost of a stew to about HK$60 per plate. Maybe is some super organic vegetables from really expensive source.

Somehow I'm expecting another similar comment but from a different account which also supports Mikawaya and the "sister-shop" but nothing else. The shop must have a lot of hard core fans. So do give Mikawaya and the corn cream pack a try if you like "hokkaido stew".

一段時間之前食．
幾隔涉．排隊等了一陣後，與另外幾位食客被安排坐在一間類似雜貨鋪的店內．
摺抬，摺凳．環境比較狹窄．空氣亦不流通．
叫了北海道忌廉飯（確實中譯名稱不太記得）－　味道與在日式超市內買的一模一樣（＄２０有交易　－　見圖）．

趕快吃完離開後，太太認為可以自己開日本餐廳．

"If Yan can cook, so can you! " ~

I was checking the differences between the layout of the English Open Rice webpage and the Chinese Open Rice webpage and I noticed that this was, surprisingly, one of the most highly recommended Japanese restaurants around town. I thus decide to offer my two pennies worth of advice.

We went there a while ago. It was quite popular no doubt due to the reasonable price. They appear to have a number of secret "dens" where they would bring customers to if the main restaurant area was full. We were brought, somewhat clandestinely, to a grocery shop nearby where we were asked to sit at folding tables and folding chairs. Other customers were brought in as well. It was pretty crowded ,lacks ventilation and not comfortable. As the stew rice was apparently famous, we tried it.

Well, after having the Hokkaido "stew", I must say I cannot recommend it to anyone. As noted by another commentator, it really tasted very much like those instant stew packs. Either those instant packs tasted very authentic or that this restaurant did a very good job at emulating those taste from scratch. If you haven't tried it before and wish to try a Hokkaido stew, i.e. a creamy white sauce with chicken/pork, green peppers, onions...etc., you could make it at home by buying the instant Hokkaido Stew pack at Jusco or any supermarket that sells Japanese products for about HK$20.

Just add water, the veggies and meat and it would taste exactly the same - but at 1/3 the price, less the waiting time - preparation time is only about 10 minutes - and more comfortable than sitting inside a grocery store (unless you're having it at student accommodations or office pantries ).

Would you go all the way to a restaurant and order an instant microwaveable rice? Probably not.

Would you go to a restaurant and order an instant noodle? Probably ... well...... actually, we do - at Cha Chan Teng!

After having it, my wife told me that she could open a Japanese restaurant too.

Although I live in Hung Hom, I never had the chance to pay a visit to MIKAWAYA.

It was a boiling noon and my mother and I were searching for somewhere cool and nice for a light lunch. I suggested MIKAWAYA.
Been ovehearing too many praises about this little authentic store, and this time, I finally had a chance to try the food myself.Luckily we found our seats as soon as we arrived, despite the small shop sized. It was always better to go in a weekday.
The inner decoration of the shop was nothing too fancy and special, the shop owner kept it in an authentic Japanese style, with handwritten Menu, photos of each dish and some Japanese styled of portraits and decoration items on the wall. Immediately any customer could feel the shop being truly homey and original. After a thorough glance at the MENU, we decided to order a main dish each and an appetizer to fill our tummy. First thing arrived was the Cold Tofu. It looked quite attractive and tiny, just enough for my mum and I. But a mega downside of this dish was that it wasn't cold enough Under the limited air conditioning, I had a hard time trying to finish the dish in an enjoyable manner... The next dish arrived was mum's Eel Rice. It was one of the most popular dishes in MIKAWAYA. From the appearance of the dish, you could tell that the eel was freshly grilled. Though the portion was not too generous, my mum quite liked it. It could have been better if there were something else other than Eel and rice, some side dishes to go along with it perhaps? My Hokkaido Creamy sauce with Hashbrown in Rice took a while to arrive. Recommended by the shoplady, this was one of the most popular dishes too. Just by looking at it, I was reminded of the times when I bought packs of Hokkaido Creamy sauce at the nearby Whampoa Jusco to cook myself some 'Hokkaido creamy sauce in rice'. Surprisingly, this dish tasted exactly the same as the packs I bought in Jusco I really wonder if they were the same origin........The hashbrown was slightly too hard and lack of the crispiness Not matching well with the dish..and the portion of rice largely exceeded the sauce and ingredients...again I had a hard time finishing the dish (or should I say rice instead). A complimentary miso soup was served along with each main dish. To one's disappointment, the miso soup was extremly watery and plain It was hard to believe that an authentic Japanese restaurant like MIKAWAYA would fail to produce good miso soup... please don't tell me that the best miso soup in town are the ones packed in supermarket!Again, if you have read my previous food reviews.. I am very against the use of wooden chopsticks and plastic cups, basically anything that are non environmental friendly. I remember the last time I found the use of wooden chopsticks was in POKKA CAFE.
I understand that MIKAWAYA is another authentic Japanese restaurant, in which it is essential to provide wooden chopsticks for the sake of being hygienic, but still! It's absolutely not cool and totally destructive by the amount of wooden chopsticks and plastic cups you throw away every single day MIKAWAYA. I strongly suggest you to change this!

After a short stay at MIKAWAYA, personally I did not think it was worth placing at such a high ranking. Perhaps my judgement of an authentic Japanese restaurant was different to the others who praised MIKAWAYA.. Yes the dishes were original, organic and 'homey'. But really, I did not think the food stood out from the rest of the Japanese restaurants in town. Under such a competitive Japanese food market in Hong Kong, it's crucial that you know how to grab your customers' heart.

- Y

Been here numerous times.
The food is quite nice for a casual meal, dun expect TOO much.
I like their udon and tempura shrimp and Okonomiyaki. They have a large selection of food to choose from so you'll never get bored eating there! I have yet to try everything on it! (One of my new year resolutions perphaps?)

Hygiene's a slight problem though, the toilet's non-functional for almost half a year now, and last time I ate a cockroach (quite a big one) suddenly decided to join in at the next table, just a singular incident I hope.

I have been planning to visit this place for 2 years, but Hung Hom is not a place I usually go to.

I managed to order the items I planned to eat, but the item I couldn’t find was the taros with the appearance of straw mushrooms.
I had the expectation they wouldn’t have as lately there haven’t been comments on it on OR.

Little squids: salted squids in miso sauce, rather chewy, took me ages to reduce it to a tiny swallowable mass! Tasted good, the last time I had it was at Wara Wara japanese casual restaurant. However the portion here is much bigger.

Fish Liver: Looked 100% like the European pate’s packaged in sausage form, I could still see the marks from the ends where they opened it. Tasted smooth and soft, and the sauce was tangy.

Pillows: Actually it was grounded sharks meat and filled with cheese. It tasted a bit like foam and looks rather like marshmallow. The last time I had it was from Issei, and you can order as much as you can. I am sure they are all from one supplier.

Curry Udon: The best udon I have had, usually I do not eat udon, because it does not tastes authentic, however the udon here is slippery and elastic. If the curry sauce was less spicy and salty, it would have been perfect. Originally ordered the udon in cream, but the smell of it was sickly.

Mountain Yam: Compared with other places that serve it, the colour is less translucent, and has a strong white radish taste. The consistency is VERY thick, similar to that of superthick porridge.

Oyster: These were grilled. I was surprised how tasty they were, after taking one bite, the whole table could smell it. They were fresh and juicy, and not mushy. The oyster was clean too.

After living in the neighborhood for over 2 years, I have never been to this restaurant. According to my friend who used to live around here, he recommended me to try their Japanese eel rice and deep-fried pork cutlet and egg rice. While awaiting for Typhoon signal 8 to be hoisted, I wandered around the Hung Hom area with my umbrella in search for this place. When I arrived around 8pm, it was full house but I only needed to wait for a few minutes because I was by myself and can sit anywhere inside this cozy little restaurant.

I can be pretty honest to say that this place is definitely not a comfortable place in terms of seating arrangement and environment. I was sweating continuously throughout the meal because of the lack of air conditioning. Based on my observation, the interior of the restaurant remained pretty much the same over the past 15 or even 20 years. However, all the surrounding factors give this place a "neighborhood diner" / "home cooking" atmosphere which I kind of enjoyed especially when dinning alone.

(1) Miso Soup
I ordered a set meal and it came with a msio soup. Just by the look of it, it was not very appetizing at all. It looked very watery. There were plenty of the ingredients such as seaweeds & beansprouts in the soup, and the miso flavor was surprisingly pretty well-balanced when compared with the many Japanese chain restaurants in Hong Kong which use extremely salty, powdery type miso mixture. I am not sure whether it was intentional or not to prepare the soup this way with a watery / diluted look, but I actually enjoyed it.

(2) Deep-Fried Pork Cutlet & Egg Rice (Katsudon)
Not bad at all. The sauce for such a rice dish is one of the most important ingredients and it was good quality sauce that was used for my Katsudon. Slightly sweet but a good match with the rest of the ingredients. The pork cutlet on the other hand, was a bit disappointing. The pork itself was rather tender but the batter was slightly too thick. In my opinion, the egg (scrambled?) acted as part of the sauce and it did a pretty good job here as well together with the onion and the actual sauce.

I will come back later for sure not only because I want to try other dishes but I also wanted to have the home cooking / neighborhood dining experiences. However, it will be on a cooler day when I return.

Likes:

* Sauce for the rice
* well-balanced miso flavor in the miso soup (even though it looked very watery)
* "home cooking" / "neighborhood diner" atmosphere

Dislikes:

* Uncomfortable seating environment
* Lack of air conditioning

Original Blog: http://jason-bonvivant.blogspot.com/2009/08/mikawaya.html

This shop is just average but not sure why that many people think they are extremely good. We arrived there after 8pm, did not wait for too long b4 getting sitted.

We ordered a Deep Fried Curry Pork Rice, their deep fried is ok, but a bit too dry, the curry sauce is like instance sauce that available in supermarket.

The temperua is average but considering the price that we pay they offer you a great portion.

The Pork Soup Noodles was not very good. The soup base is like cream instead of pork bone favour.

They use a lot of MSG , very thirsty after dinner.

Worth trying but please don't intentionally go there otherwise you will be very disappointed.

Been living in the area for over 2 years and never knew about this place until this week. I read from Open Rice that there would be usually a line, so tonight I went there first to stand in line first. Good thing it wasn't too long for us to get the table, only 15 minutes.
Service was good. The lady was nice and took our order quickly. We ordered curry pork chop rice plate, Ramen, cold tofu, sweet chestnut tempura, and cold eggplant dish. All were very YUMMY!!! However, see the location and the environment, I think this place is not considered as "Budget". But like my husband said, you really get what you pay for!
Food was even better than we expected. We will for sure come back again and again.

after our gourmet meal at si sun fast food, we proceeded to 2nd part of our valentine's excursion in hunghom.

the 6 hour never-ending wait gave us sufficient time to pick out what we wanted to order before having a table. But we didn't mind.
the menu was comprehensive for a quaint japanese restaurant at hung hom. selection ranges from seaweed salad, kimchee, sweet potato, cold tofu, to oden, a variety of udon, japanese curry, ramen and rice. there are a few choices for desserts and also sufficient list of japanese sake.
our choices were eel rice and chicken ramen.
dishes arrived fairly quickly upon order. they were well presented and delicious looking
Eel was just the right size but with an overabundance of rice and under-abundance of sauce. i would recommend Mikawaya to join the "Green Campaign" launched in early Feb this year aiming to reduce food waste.
temperature of ramen pork broth was warm but could be slightly hotter especially during cold weather. subtle flavor of pork was good compare to other restaurants which overdose you with pungent pork smell which makes you wonder whether they had put an entire pig to cook the soup.
the condiments for ramen were what you expect for the price you pay for.
if they were to lure me again for the seemingly never ending wait, i would wish for more condiments on my ramen.

While no Inagiku, a fun and good quality japanese restaurant in the heart of Hunghom.

XOXO
cocopuff