Tokyo Shokudo — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

⚠️ IT’S CHAOTIME ⚠️

Tokyo Shokudo used to go under a different name and mainly served tempura dishes, but they recently revamped the menu and added a ton of new stuff, notably onigiri and the maze noodles. 99% of the time I visit the Mitsuwa Marketplace cafeteria, I will order the ramen from Santouka, but the new menu definitely tempted me to deviate from the norm. I was stoked to try it.

First thing I noticed while ordering was that the cashier seemed to lack fundamental training… 😬 He seemed very nervous and struggled while taking our order. He also didn’t seem too familiar with the onigiri combos they were advertising at the front of the shop. Bless his soul—he was trying.

We ordered the Red Mabo Maze Noodles (Level 2 Spicy), the Pork Cutlet Bowl, and the Salmon Onigiri with Mayo. Took about 10 min. Unfortunately, instead of holding the last Salmon Onigiri with Mayo for us, the cashier sold it to someone who ordered it after us while we were waiting for our food, so we just got the regular Grilled Salmon Onigiri. Pretty disappointed there, but we just let it go.

When the Maze Noodles came out, I could tell from just a glance that it was going to fall short of my expectations. The Mabo sauce looked greasy and like it had been sitting out for a while. They also littered the bowl with black pepper, much more than needed. First bite—not terrible. Flavorful for sure, just a tad too salty and much too greasy. The noodles had an excellent texture—the saving grace of this dish. But yeah, the mabo sauce was just too heavy and viscous; it almost felt like I was slurping on straight up lard at some point. Moreover, the noodles did too good of a job at absorbing the sauce when I really just needed less of it.

The Pork Cutlet Bowl was mediocre at best. The flavor of the tonkatsu/pork cutlets was there, but the crispiness was nonexistent… Soggy breading for a tonkatsu dish?? That’s a big no-no 🙂‍↔️ But I mean, at least the flavor was there.

Man.. Don’t even get me started on the onigiri. Rice was hard, salmon filling was dry. Everything just crumbled in my mouth. Idk if the Salmon w Mayo would’ve been any better, but I’m not at all curious.

I know I only tried a few things off the menu, so I might have to revisit. Everyone deserves second chances. However, if you’re not a risk taker, you’re better off ordering from Santouka or Sutadonya,...

I looked online and saw they closed at 8 so we decided to pop in for a bite to eat. (I later figured out that the store closes at 8 and the restaurants close earlier). There are multiple restaurants in this supermarket and I decided to order from here. I decided on the soba and egg roll. When I went to order the girl told me I couldn’t have the soba because they are so close to closing. I can only choose from a rice plate. Soba is a noodle soup. In my opinion I feel like that wouldn’t be time consuming but I’m not sure of their process. So I went with a shrimp and rice plate and egg roll. The food ended up taking 20 minutes to come out so I still was very confused on why the soba couldn’t be ordered.

My order was $18. $13 for the shrimp and rice and $3 for the egg roll (then tax). The largest waste of money.

I’ll first start with the egg roll. I’m 99% positive that was a spring roll. It looked and tasted exactly like the spring rolls I get at Costco. It was one tiny tiny flavorless spring roll.

The shrimp and rice- it was simply that. 5 fried shrimp over white rice with a little soy sauce on it. 100% not worth the money or calories. My husband ordered from another restaurant and his food was amazing. I ended up having to put some of his rice in mine to give it some flavor.

I’ve always heard such great things about the restaurants in this grocery store and I was beyond disappointed with my entire experience here.

If you are debating on where to order I would recommend...

Located in the food court of the Mitsuwa Marketplace (on the west side of the food court just to the right of the hallway to the bathrooms), this Japanese restaurant had a good selection of food, in usual Japanese tradition- had visual representations of all the meals, and the prices were good. This was my wife & I's first time eating at this place, and we enjoyed the food a lot. They accept cash which is huge in my opinion as a lot of the businesses and restaurants inside Mitsuwa do not accept cash; I tipped them as a result & told them Thank You for accepting cash. The lady who took our order was very friendly and answered our questions about the food with a huge smile on her face. Seating is located in the general food court area so you can't really say much about the food court other than it is very busy if you go around lunch time on the weekends, but you'll find plenty of seating for lunch on a week day.

Plenty of fun things to do before or after eating in Mitsuwa as well from the grocery store, book store, One Piece card game store, boba tea, and lots of other restaurants and...