Made a pilgrimage up to Edgewater, NJ, to visit Mitsuwa Marketplace yesterday, after a sake recommendation from our server at Sakagura restaurant in NYC that wife took me to for my birthday last month. The place had over 200 bottles of sake, and I was in heaven. It was actually more a japanese tapas bar than a sushi place. They only serve sushi for lunches, but the dinners consist of ordering a bunch of little dishes. It was fantastic, and our waitress was a certified sake sommelier and paired each dish with some great sake. She recommended the market, which is almost 2 hours from home, hence the big purchase.
The bottles on the top left are Himezen sake, which was dry and sweet, almost like a dessert wine. The genie-like bottles I had at the Sapporo restaurant in New Brunswick, NJ, were good and only $7 each for 300ml. The twisty bottle looked too cool to pass up, and the other two just sounded good.
Mitsuwa was horrendously packed, impossible to park, but had a sake isle as long as a grocery store's dairy isle. I almost cried. Might have been the pre-New Year's rush, but I didn't want to have to go back any time soon, so I bought what I knew I'd like plus a few other things to try. I'd like to go back in the off hours sometime though, because they had a noodle bar inside with a line that went outside, so it must be good. And, almost everyone shopping inside was Japanese, or at least with someone who was; can't go wrong with that kind of customer base.
To find a place that specializes in sake, even two hours away, makes life that much better. Kampai!
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