Home-style Japanese @ Oshiriya, Hong Kong

One of the crazy things about living in Hong Kong with kids is the education, especially the situation with international schools. I could seriously go on and on about it - such as the ridiculously long wait list that numbers in the hundreds, the interviews that the kids have to go through (my friend's kid had an interview for an international kindergarten when he was only 16 months old!) and the prohibitively high cost of so-called 'debentures' that you have to pay to secure a spot - but this is not the place to do it. Last week my 4-year-old boy had to do one such interview at an school, and I can't tell you what was in the interview because he was whisked away to another room with the other children for an hour. We were hungry for lunch by the time we left the school, so we dropped by a little Japanese diner that was on the way to the MTR station. I found this place from Openrice where it was ranked 11th out of more than 800 restaurants listed in the surrounding area. We sat in this diner for five minutes before I asked if they had fried rice on the menu for our boy. I didn't understand any of the Cantonese that was spoken to us, but I got the idea that they didn't serve fried rice, but that they had another shop run by the same owner just across the street. The friendly lady asked one of the kitchen guys to send us to their sister shop which was called Owariya. The lady serving us in Owariya also didn't speak much English, so she called the owner over to help us with our allergy requests. This guy spoke well in both English and Cantonese, and then we found out that he's Japanese! I wish I could be trilingual. I took it as a good sign that the food would be authentically prepared, and sat back to enjoy the meal.

The Miso Soup that came with our orders:

Oshiriya is located in a very local area, where most of the signs are in Chinese and there aren't many foreigners around. This is a no-frills diner serving rustic Japanese favourites like karaage chicken, katsudon, kare udon and countless donburi (rice) dishes, and they were all at very affordable 'local' prices. The same menu from Mikawaya (the first shop) is also available here, plus additional dishes, which puts Owariya a notch above Mikawaya, in my humble opinion. The food was without a doubt very tasty, and I wouldn't hesitate to come back again if I'm ever in the area with a hankering for homestyle Japanese food.

Salmon Korroke, with a generous drizzle of Japanese mayonnaise and a sprinkling of katsuobushi flakes:

Fried Rice with Chicken - very tasty:

Hubby's Kare Udon, which was also very yummy:

I got an Unadon which was delicious:

Prompt service, good food and great price. Eating the food made me miss Japan ever so much more.

Owariya
Ground floor
7 Ming On Street
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Hong Kong
Tel. +85 2 6747 9579