For our first dining out adventure of 2011, my family and I went to Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese supermarket with a dining area with several small restaurants in it.
As it was New Year’s Day my husband and kids decided to celebrate with sushi. My daughter got the Inari sushi with tamago and kampyo rolls (upper left hand corner of the picture, $5.75).
My son got the Tonkatsu (breaded pork) bento box (lower left corner of the picture, $6.75). He gobbled up the pork, but left quite a bit of rice. He was also less than thrilled with some of the less familiar root vegetables that were include. However, he liked most of the other items in the bento.
My husband ordered Salmon Onigiri (upper right hand corner of the picture, $1.45), a triangle of rice with salmon flakes inside and seaweed covering the outside of it all. (My daughter and son tried this and both loved it!) He also ordered Salmon Avocado Roll (lower right hand corner of the picture, $4.45) and octopus, ($3.44) which he chose not to take a picture of it.
In Japan where my husband grew up, New Year’s Day is a day to spend with family and to eat good food. This food was good, but not as good as what he ate in Japan. However, we can afford the price tag of this food much more than the good food he remembers eating in Japan!
I broke with tradition and order Dol Sok Bi Bim Ba (I am sure I didn’t spell that correctly!) with a coke ($10.62 total).
We went to the market to eat good food and to watch the traditional Japanese are of making Omochi and playing drums. (You can read about that here and watch our video of it here.) The kids were excited about the day, so they were a little wild. It was hard to enjoy our food when we spent so much time making sure they were okay and feeding the baby. I love little ones, but in some respects, I will be glad when the kids are a bit older.
We spent a grand total of $32.95, so we are over our goal of $25 for the week. We will have a more conservative meal out next week to compensate.
Melissa, a mom to three little ones (ages 7, 3 and 1), blogs at both Mom’s Plans where she writes about living a fulfilling life on less and paying down debt, and Fiscal Phoenix where she writes about rising from the ashes of your financial mistakes.