Japanese food takes root in Brooklyn

January 16, 2019 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

A sampling of the cuisine at Industry City's Japan Village. Photo courtesy of Industry City

Share this:

Japanese food is becoming more popular in Brooklyn, and two developments in Park Slope and in Sunset Park illustrate this fact.

In the first, J+B Design at 300 Seventh St. in Park Slope, which has been selling Japanese home goods for about five years, has expanded its food line. Now, the store has a wall of Japanese packaged snacks, soup mixes, teas, spices, condiments and other ingredients, according to The New York Times. The initials in the store’s name stand for “Japan and Brooklyn.”

In the second, Japan Village, which contains food stalls, an izakaya restaurant (a type of gastropub) and a grocery store, opened in November at 934 Third Ave. inside Industry City in Sunset Park.

Japan Village’s stalls sell “everything from soba and udon noodles … to Japanese street food.” The liquor store features Japanese sake and whiskey, and the izakaya restaurant “dishes out options like grilled skewers and sashimi,” Eater said. A grocery, Sunrise Mart, includes its own butcher shop and tofu market, Eater said.

Takyua Yoshida, one of two owners along with Tony Yoshida, told Eater that the organizers of Japan Village “want it to feel like you’re in a market in Japan.” The food, he said, is the type you would typically find in Japan, not Asian fusion.

The Yoshidas are planning an expansion and have already signed for 20,000 additional square feet within Industry City, Eater reported.