Midtown Mart
From daily necessities to seasonings and foods easy to cook, everything needed for Japanese food fans is here at the Midtown Mart located at Marina Square.
Here, you can find Japanese foods aplenty which you can hardly see at any other supermarket. The mart is attractive especially because there are a great deal of confectionery and processed foods. Midtown Mart is constantly updated with the latest food trends in Japan and introduces those items into the mart!
For confectionery, they store a variety of items which everyone from children to adults, to even the elderly, can enjoy.
There are also some special Japanese snacks offered for a limited time only, so please check it out via their Facebook page!
The staff does everything including directly importing products into the store so that customers can enjoy competitive prices.
Their Japanese corporate investor runs a chain of 80 supermarkets in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, have a merchandising department that has many buyers scouting around for existing and new marketable products. Every month, they propose to general managers in Singapore about 10 new items for the managers and staffs to consider importing from Japan. As the mart has had sold out items on many occasions, many customers who are familiar with Japanese snacks take great interest in the items introduced.
We bought the following items shown in the picture: kataage potato chips, koeda (chocolate), instant yakisoba, Calpis (Japanese milk-based soft drink), koucha-kaden (milk tea) and salmon flakes. I was surprised that this special favor of kataage potato chips and koeda can be bought in Singapore. Kataage potato chips is quite hard compared to other brands of potato chips, and once you try it, you will get hooked on its crunchy texture. As for koeda, the chocolate sticks are subdivided (five small chocolate sticks for each pack), so you can easily share it with friends.
Water, mayonnaise and sauce; those were the ingredients for preparing the perfect yakisoba. We accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction, salmon flakes. And thus, Yakisoba with Salmon Flakes was born! Jokes aside, the yakisoba competes well with other brands and forms instant noodles to satisfy your palette, so grab it while you can!
As for the kinoko no yama, they were like yam yams, except with shorter sticks and solidified chocolate. Their unique and cute shape adds to the whole experience.
Next, we come to the drinks. The milk tea’s rich and creamy taste reminds me of the times I had in England enjoying some classic milk tea!
We then sampled 2 different types of calpis, calpis soda and normal soda. For the normal caplis, it tasted like yoghurt personified into a drink. The soda variation reminded me of the ice cream soda drink from F&N, but tasted a lot less artificial. Though I do not usually enjoy carbonated drink, I thoroughly enjoyed the calpis soda’s refreshing taste.
I guess there is no Singaporean food which can match the flavors of these foods. I hope that many of you can try them!
Written by: Mio Sogabe and Jonathan Chan