Inexpensive Japanese Food In Lower Sukhumvit?

[jfchandler]

The U.S. fast-food chain Burger King used to have a marketing slogan... "Have it your way," meaning they'd customize the burger the way you wanted it in terms of adding or removing toppings or condiments.

That appears to be the niche that the CocoIchibanya chain of Japanese curry houses is seeking in Thailand. After seeing their Siam Paragon outlet (on the lower food/market level) surprisingly packed when I happened to be passing by quite a few times, I figured I'd stop in and give them a try, being a longtime connoiseur of Japanese curries.

Based on a sampling of their vegetable curry priced at 140 baht, I came away relatively unimpressed. The sauce was pretty bland and tasteless, though on the good side, they did serve decent short grain Japanese rice and included asparagus among the curry's mixed vegetables, which you don't get too often. But considering that the nearby Fumi Japanese food restaurant in Paragon serves IMHO a better tasting and similarly sized vegetable curry for 90 baht, CocoIchi is hard to recommend.

That said, the place seems to be regularly packed with Thai university students in their uniform regalia... Not quite sure why they've chosen CocoIchi as a favorite. The menu has a large selection of different kinds of curry entrees, or I should say, the same kind of curry sauce with different meat/seafood/vegetable items added in, generally priced between 140 and 170 baht per... But not a particularly larger selection of entree choices than you'd likely find in other dedicated Japanese curry houses here.

However, CocoIchi doesn't stop there... For an extra charge, you can also customize your entree by ordering up to 3 extra size portions of rice... 250g is the regular, but you can pay extra for 350, 450 or 550g of rice. I tried the 350g portion for 30 baht extra, and discovered, while the rice portion may go up, the curry sauce portion apparently stays the same. So toward the end of my meal, I was left with a big pile of white rice and no curry sauce to accompany it.

Other than the variety of entree choices as mentioned above, they also have a long list of extra toppings you can add onto whatever curry entree you've chosen, generally in the 30 to 60 baht extra per item price range. Why I'd want to add tuna or corn or bacon or cheese on top of my Japanese curry, I'm not quite sure... but at CocoIchi.. you can...

Their menu shows other locations at MBK, the Esplanade on Ratchadapisek, and Central Festival in Pattaya. They're certainly a big, international restaurant company, with their corporate web site showing the following locations:

Japan : 1,181

Directly managed restaurants: 295

FC Member (I'm assuming this means "franchise") restaurants: 886

International : 29

Hawaii: 4

China (Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou): 12

Taiwan: 5

South Korea: 3

Thailand: 5

Total : 1,210 (as of end of August 2009)

So if you want to have your Japanese curry "your way," then CocoIchi may be a good choice. But if you want good Japanese curry, I'd say there are much better offerings around BKK to be had.

Edited September 20, 2009 by jfchandler

[trogers]

I ate at the food center of Siam Paragon once and never again.

Almost all the food outlets do not have a kitchen. Food is cooked elsewhere, and just kept warm for serving.

I might as well buy pre-cooked food from the supermarket and shove it into my microwave, and at a quarter of the price.

[jfchandler]

Interesting comment... TRogers, though a bit off our main thread topic here...

I will say, I happened to try to Fumi Japanese shop in the basement of Siam Paragon the other day, and found the food in taste to be pretty inferior to the generally quite good food I've had at the Emporium branch of the same place. I happened to order the same dishes in both locations, so it was a straight up dish to dish comparison. Fumi, by the way, does appear to have their own kitchen even at the Siam Paragon branch.

I likewise had a pretty terrible meal at the K-CA ramen shop in the same area of Paragon a few months back. And others here, responding to my review, said they thought the K-CA shop at the Emporium had better food, though my experience at K-CA Paragon was so lackluster that I've never been anxious to give them a second shot at the Emporium.

Likewise, I generally like the food at Sunrise Tacos Soi 12, but thought the Paragon version of the same wasn't quite in the same ballpark...

One begins to get the feeling of a trend here... But, I believe, there still are some very good eateries in the Paragon...

[jfchandler]

Based on this comment below and a few others that mentioned this place in passing, I decided with the TW in tow to venture down to Suk Soi 33/1 today (a short walk from the Phrom Phong BTS Station) to track down this elusive Tsubakiya restaurant... Elusive because, I shop often at the Fuji market there in that same soi, and never recalled seeing a restaurant there by that name. And indeed today, when we arrived and walked the soi at midday, we still couldn't visually locate the place, and a local Thai guard there we asked was clueless...

So after asking and asking, a staff member from another Japanese restaurant on the soi (Kuroda) finally led us in hand to the doorstep of Tsubakiya, which to be clear, is located on the opposite side of the soi from Fuji, but further into the soi beyond the market entrance, and just one shop before the end of the row of small shops on the right where you finally arrive at a large cooking school.

Sure enough, Tsubakiya has a 2nd floor-level sign there, but nothing that you'd particularly see or notice during daytime. So finally we headed inside to try their lunchtime sushi buffet, which seems to be offered every day of the week from 11:30 am to 3 pm, for the total price of 270 baht per person (no additional tax or service charge is added on).

Basically, this place works differently for their lunch buffet than some typical kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi restaurants where the chefs prepare what they want and then the customer typically picks their choice off what is available on the conveyor belt (or water boats, or whatever). At Tsubakiya's buffet, you actually order your choice of sushi or cut sushi rolls off their laminated one-page sushi menu, tell the waitress what you want, she tells the chefs and then a moment or two later delivers the ordered dish to you.

That's nice in that it allows you to order what you want, and as much of any item as you want, within the confines of their buffet menu. But, actually, the menu involved is really their broader sushi menu, not just for the buffet. So it turns out the menu items included in the buffet are all the ones listed up to the price of 100 baht per order (i.e., 40 baht, 60 baht, 80 baht and 100 baht dishes). Most of the sushi menu items have a picture of the prepared item next to the name, making it a bit easier for those who can't remember their ebi (shrimp) from their unagi (eel).

The more expensive categories of dishes that are listed on the sushi menu, up to and including toro tuna at 180 or 200 baht per order, are not part of the buffet. Still, the buffet menu choices must have included a list of two dozen or so items, including most of the regular raw fish choices, a half dozen or so cut roll options, tamago (egg) and a few others. More than enough to keep one satisfied. It also was nice that each order was freshly prepared in front of us, instead of picking it up off the conveyor belt at other places, and not knowing how long it might have been circling.

Our meal came with/included a small bowl of miso soup, and complimentary iced green tea. We ordered what we wanted in the way of sushi, everything was delivered promptly without any question or hesitation, and the food was fine. Certainly not the best sushi I've ever had. But much better than the packaged grocery store stuff, or what's served up in the way of sushi at some of the mass market sushi buffets around town.

Today on the day of our visit, they weren't much using the small conveyor belt that runs along the front of the small sushi counter. Instead, as the chefs behind the counter would serve up a dish, the waitress generally would come over, grab the plate, and deliver it to the counter occupant who ordered it, or to the few nearby standalone tables they also have there. The restaurant also has a few enclosed tatami rooms, though they didn't seem to be in use for the lunch buffet today during our visit.

The regular restaurant menu they have on a table sitting outside has quite a large selection of set dishes, cooked dishes, noodles, and other kinds of Japanese dishes. And the prices seemed generally reasonable. One demerit I'll pass along is for cleanliness, in that I happened to spot a small buggy creature (you know what kind) crawling along the floor at my feet during the meal.

Overall, the atmosphere inside isn't much. But the sushi's not bad, and for the price, it's a good value for freshly prepared real fish sushi, as opposed to the various kinds of imitation fish things out there. I'd likewise be interested in hearing opinions from anyone who's eaten there off their regular restaurant menu...

Tsubakiya down the end opposite Fuji has a fantastic sushi train deal for weekend lunch (All you can eat 280 Baht, with the manager looking on ensuring the dishes are decent quality and variety. You pay less than that if you only eat a couple of dishes too - I think it is 8 plates before the cost is capped at 280 Baht?).

PS - as the photo above indicates, their Set A options offers 8 dishes for 240 baht....a smaller version of their broader, slightly more expensive buffet.

[jfchandler]

Speaking of kaiten-style Japanese restaurants, I should add, we had a really LOUSY meal the other week at the Kobune restaurant at FortuneTown, near the Rama 9 MRT Station.

Had ordered some regular menu items there before, not bad, not great. But on this weekend evening, we decided to try their kaiten menu, where everything (maybe 30 or so small dishes) is priced at 25 baht per dish. So we sat and watched the small boats float around the center table, each carrying two or three small dishes. And we saw some fried, battered things, and some more of those, and more of those, and more of those...and every now and then, something actually worth eating.

So finally, in frustration, we asked the waitress, and she said we could order individual dishes off the kaiten menu with her. So we tried one raw fish sushi item and were told they had run out of that fish for the day. Though we were able to finally get a couple of halfway decent items via ordering, while the boats kept carrying all the fried things around and around. And this was at least an hour before their closing time, so it wasn't like they were shutting down or had run out of customers sitting at the kaiten.

Needless to say, won't be going back to Kobune there for kaiten any time soon.

[mauiguy90]

I recommend Honjyo, which is a very nice restaurant located just opposite the Emporium, near the stairs of the BTS station. Even tho' they have an expensive dinner menu, they have daily lunch specials for about 250 baht plus tax. Their food is very good and the restaurant itself is quite attractive, although a bit dark. The best deal is for ladies only, which is a combination sushi/sashimi lunch set, which sells for a mere 180 baht...It is a very generous lunch set including the best egg custard I've had(generally don't touch the stuff). The food is great, the atmosphere authentic and the drinks--maybe a bit expensive. Watch your drink consumption and you will have a nice, inexpensive Japanese lunch option on Sukhumvit. Just make sure you bring a lady friend so you can sample the "ladies only" lunch set.

Edited November 25, 2009 by mauiguy90