I love Japanese (or any Asian, really) food stores. When I go traveling, it is one of my favorite things to do and one of the first places I check out.
Going to foreign/ethnic markets at home, therefore, is a sort of mini escape for me. Hello Kitchen is on my commute home and is a cute little Japanese grocery store. It pretty much exclusively sells Japanese goods, along with the occasional Chinese or Korean item that is popular in Japan. But really it is pretty much exclusively Japanese. And since it is Japanese, it is not cheap. A single brick of ramen will cost you like £1.60 here at least.
But you can get all your staples: sushi rice, ginger, rice vinegar, tofu, noodles, miso paste, Japanese pickles, curry blocks, nori (seaweed), Japanese candy, crackers, seasonings, soy sauce, ponzu, sake, and so on. While they have a few fresh produce items (last I checked, they had fresh shitake mushrooms and Chinese cabbage), but this pace is mostly dry goods, so don't count on doing a full shop here.
They also have a prepared food section... but I have to say, the sushi I had here was pretty gross. Like, on par with Tesco's sushi. What kind of self-respecting Japanese folk are these?! The rice was cold and too dense and the salmon fishy. Itsu sushi would wallop Hello Kitchen sushi in a sumo match. And that's sad. Ok, so stay away from the sushi, but otherwise, this is a nice spot to pick up some quality imported products.
Directly across the street from Golders Green Station on the Northern Line. read more