Jan 10, 2014
Mijori Japanese Restaurant
3260 Grand Ave., Oakland, CA
http://mijorijapanese.com/  
Review date: January 2014

Still on the hunt for a Japanese restaurant that suits Carlos, me, and my MIL Inez, which could satisfactorily replace Ta-Ke as our weekly "regular", we tried this restaurant for lunch. It's just up from the Grand Lake theatre, next to the old-time bakery.

It's a pleasant space, somewhat cramped with tables, and actually run by Japanese which is a change some of the others in the EBay. I'm not sure if they may be Hawaiian Japanese, however, as there were some different touches to the food.

They bring free miso soup, which was weak on the average quality miso and dashi, as well as a little overdone on the salty soy. The salad that comes with some meals is no better and no worse than anybody else's, the usual iceberg lettuce with thinned mayo and sesame oil.

We ordered the agedashi tofu, fried fresh tofu cubes, to share. Carlos and I are fond of this, but this didn't resemble any Japanese version from anywhere else. The tofu is cubed into squares, which is typical, but it is flour-battered with the same batter used on all the fried foods, including the tempura items. Plus, it comes with a thickened black bean/ginger teriyaki-style sauce – tasty stuff, but too much of it glopped in the bowl. 

The tofu was marginally fresh, but what I objected to was the batter. I didn't care for it at all; it was too thick and clumpy, with no salt and too much old reused oil. In fact, the entire restaurant smells of old oil. 

On the good side, the batter works well on the chicken kara-age. Very irregularly cut chunks of dark meat chicken battered and fried. As I had ordered the ebi-tempura starter as my main, the waitress indicated that the bowl of dashi was to be used for both. 

This was rather parsimonious (dashi is expensive, which is why most restaurants cut it with too much water) and turned out to be a mistake on my part. I didn't try the dashi before I added the soya. Since the dashi had been oversalted with soya (normally it shouldn't have any added when used as a dip) and the bottles on the table held the same oversalty soya, my usual modest addition made this so painfully salty none of us could stand using more than a tiny, tiny bit on each piece.

The tempura was terrible, the tasteless batter soaking up the stale grease. As happened at Kansai, I tore off whatever batter I could and ate what little insides I could find.

Inez, however, was happy with her Y2K roll. It's a modestly-sized wet roll with a snow crab filling, topped with avocado and unagi, BBQ'ed eel. Despite her words of "Oh, this is so big!" it is, in fact, noticeably smaller in diameter than the rolls that Ta-Ke makes. This is fine, as she can barely finish the Ta-Ke roll!

Carlos was happy because he approved of the reasonably good quality of the 12-piece sashimi lunch plate. The sea bass was a poor quality and stringy, but the salmon was okay and the hamachi and tuna were actually quite good. When I asked him to rate it, he said it wasn't as good as when Ta-Ke was at its best, but with Ta-Ke sliding downhill, Mijori's plate was better than Ta-Ke's current sashimi efforts.

Despite my not liking the tempura, the black bean-ginger-teriyaki sauce on the tofu would be fine in a rice bowl, so I agreed next time I'll try a donburi. 

Three people, lunch: three starters, two mains, with tip was $55.