In recent years, Asian grocery stores have effectively become a Bay Area hobby, particularly the mega grocers with their airy, warehouse-like spaces, bright lights and overabundance of products.
Among the biggest to arrive in the past year is the second location of Japanese supermarket Tokyo Central, which opened at the Emeryville Bay Street mall in January. Inside, shoppers make their way past the produce area, the snack shelves and numerous sauce racks to the supermarket’s main attraction: the prepared food section.
In its early months, shoppers waited hours just to get inside, only to be met with depleted inventories. Today, the scene is calmer, the cold cases reliably stocked with sashimi sets, octopus salad, chicken skewers covered in sticky sauce and rice bowls galore — some pair curry with pork katsu cutlets, while the classic oyakodon features chicken and poached egg. Dudes in athletic wear stock up on hand rolls as if for meal prep. Kids push miniature red carts filled with fried chicken boxes and mochi packages. Couples make edible propositions to each other: “Should we share a fruit sando?”…