Brenda's SF Bay Area Food Travels: Kissako Tea and Lunch at Mifune!

On a foggy and slightly cold day while visiting San Francisco’s Japantown was where I waited for my friend to have lunch with. When my friend let me know that she was running late I decided to walk around the Japantown mall and see what snacks I could find since I was hungry. It was really early in the morning so I bought an iced coffee from Andersen Bakery and walked towards the mall’s lower level where I found Kissako Tea! I read from reviews from Yelp that they had varieties of freshly made sweet and savory mochi something I am a huge fan of. I was looking for a particular kind of mochi on a stick and I was glad to see they had just made a fresh batch. Kissako’s tropical mochi at the time I bought it cost around $3.00 (there an extra charge if using credit card). The service was quick and friendly though I wish I paid in cash instead to avoid the surcharge paying with card. They also had other tasty looking treats such as ongiri (rice shaped into triangles with meat filling wrapped in seaweed, green tea ice cream sandwiches, and takoyaki that makes me want to revisit to try. Going back outside to the stone circle shaped benches outside of the Japantown mall to wait for my friend I enjoyed my strongly caffeinated iced coffee and took a bite of the tropical mochi which had a soft and chewy delicate texture with strong flavors and scents of either peach, guava, and pineapple in each mochi piece. I only finished eating the peach flavored mochi when my friend finally arrived.

Kissako Tea stand with their menu. Credits go to yelp users

My large iced coffee from Andersen Bakery and Tropical fresh fruit mochi from Kissako Tea!

We walked back into Japantown’s main mall straight down past a few boutique and makeup/skincare shops to get to Mifune Japanese restaurant. I had not been there in years and my friend suggested we try one of their lunch specials. I ordered a lunch set of niku udon (slices of pork with Japanese noodles and broth) and grilled unagi over rice for a little over $12. Going over their lunch menu they have a lot of choices for the lunch combinations such as curry over rice with beef udon, I liked the grilled unagi over rice a lot more than the niku udon as I finished that entrée first. The portions were also good sized, not too overfilling but not underwhelming at the same time. My friend very quickly finished her cold zaru soba noodles and sashimi before I did in less than ten minutes, but she was patient to wait for me to finish eating. It is always nice catching up with my friend and trying new restaurants or other food places I did not know with great lunch specials in San Francisco like Kissako Tea and Mifune.