Mitsuwa Marketplace - Special Events - Costa Mesa, CA

The Mitsuwa food court is not very vegetarian friendly. The Japanese food places have pork broth or fish broth or some type of meat juice in it. During special events however, there were some simple foods to try.

Inari Okowa

Okowa is glutinous rice with vegetables and/or meat. In this case I just asked for the ones without meat. The one in the center is their famous chestnut okowa. The other two are red bean. Usually inari has sushi rice but they put okowa in it instead. It's quite delicious. It's soft and chewy and the chestnut flavor was good. You can also use the okowa to make rice balls and it's very tasty. Something different that I've never had before. The people that made these were from Hokkaido. Hope to see them again at another special event.

Onigiri (Rice balls)

Speaking of rice balls, I had some onigiri at another one of Mitsuwa's special events. The only ones that didn't have meat were this one and the ume plum one. I didn't choose the ume plum because I was afraid it would be too sour. I think for a vegetarian it's probably better to make this one at home and add veggies and stuff to it. This is just plain rice with some soy sauce and what tasted like tea leaves. It was okay...but I liked the okowa better. There is more flavor to the okowa as this rice ball is kind of plain. There were other onigiri with meat that looked much tastier because it had nuts and other food in it besides just plain rice.

I usually check their website to see if there are special events coming up. Even though main dishes pretty much don't exist for a vegetarian, there are lots of sweets to eat. These goodies are considered not so healthy because it is mostly made up of plain white rice. =( Can someone make a brown rice version? That'd be great!

Mitsuwa Marketplace

http://www.mitsuwa.com/english/index.html

Okowa and Onigiri eaten at:

Costa Mesa Store

665 Paularino Ave.

Costa Mesa, CA 92626

714-557-6699

Food places open daily from 11AM - 7:30PM