Ever since they officially opened toward the end of 2019, I have been wanting to visit Konbini. The name “Konbini” comes from a Japanese term, shorten from “Convenience Store” like Seven-Eleven. If you ever been to Japan and visited one of many convenience stores there, you know how awesome they are! If you haven’t then you really should try a few. You will be pleasantly surprised. They are nothing like the convenience stores here in the US. So, I was excited to hear about this new spot!
It is located in K-Town, so I had a feeling that this was not really Japanese owned/operated, and I was right. That always makes me a bit sad, but that doesn’t mean their food is less than desirable, so we went in with high hopes. Since it is still during the pandemic, they had some outdoor seating, but they also had some limited indoor seating. It was rather cold that day, so we decided to sit inside. We first had to fill out some COVID-related questionnaires, and checked our temperature before we were taken to our table. They had clear wall dividers between the tables to provide extra safety.
The menu offered here looked really great, mostly what you might see in some casual restaurants in Japan. I heard that the owner/chef based the menu on her travels to Japan. Nice! We were there for brunch, and saw that they have Devoción Coffee, we had to have a cup. We asked for the Hot Devoción Coffee ($3.50/hot) with milk. They brought the coffee in a paper cup, without milk, so we had to ask for it again… The milk container was one of those tiny jugs, super cute. Once we poured the milk in there, we realized we didn’t get anything to stir with…so we used our fork. LOL. They need to do a bit better job with the way they serve coffee. Nevertheless, the coffee itself, as expected, was very good!
We were very hungry, so, we decided to order two individual dishes, and one set menu. I know I wanted to try their signature dish, Eggbini. They donburi menu looked really good, so we decided to order one of the donburi too.
Eggbini is a Konbini egg sandwich served on premium Brioche toast with a choice of their signature white cheese sauce or spicy mayo sauce. They have nine different types of Eggbini to choose from, and they all sounded pretty good! We finally decided on Mentaiko Mozzarella Eggbini ($12), made with Signature Eggs, Mentaiko & Mozzarella Cheese topped with Homemade Spicy Mentaiko Aioli. We chose Spicy Mayo Sauce for the sauce option.
Konbini makes their Brioche in-house every day. It was good, airy and soft, buttery and toasted to perfection. With all the spicy elements, this eggbini was quite spicy! It was cheesy and melty, cuddling and snuggling with mentaiko. Eggs were very fluffy, cooked just right. It had delightful, tasty, and yes, spicy flavor. The condiments that came with were really good too! It was so flavorful that it didn’t need them, but it was nice to have the option.
For donburi, I was thinking of gyudon (beef donburi), but my hubby wanted pork, so we chose Butadon ($14). It is made with pork belly simmered in a sweet dashi broth over rice.
The Butadon was really amazing! Might look small in the photos, but it was very filling! Great portion, fat juicy tender pork, marinated and cooked to perfection. They are super generous with the pork, it had loads of juicy port! Konbini really know to make their customers happy…
I mentioned that we were very hungry…and we didn’t know the portion size here. So, we ordered Cheese Tonkatsu Set ($17), made with Breaded Fried Pork Loin and Cheese Cutlet. The set comes with Comes with cabbage salad, rice, and miso soup.
It came with a sweet tangy sauce, and sesame seeds in a traditional-looking mortar and pestle. I thought it was really cool! Konbini knows how katsu dishes should be served… Great! If you are not familiar with it, you first grind the sesame seeds in the mortar, but not too much. You want to keep the flavor of the sesame to the max. Then, you can add it to the sauce, although some people like to add the sauce to the mortar.
You can pour some of the sauce over the cabbage, but it already had salad dressing on the cabbage here, so we didn’t do that. You can dip your katsu in the sauce as you eat them. The cheese on the katsu was super melty! They were freshly fried, yet not greasy. A great portion to make you full and satisfied.
Their bathroom is located all the way in the back, past their kitchen. You can take a look at the staff making some of their tasty creations on the way. They have one bathroom for men and another one for women. The bathroom was roomy and bright, well organized. They have a diaper changing station for mothers with infants, which is always helpful.
We were super full after trying three of their dishes, much more than expected. Their portion is great! The staffs here are not the most friendly people, nor most efficient, but courteous, and seems to be hard to workers. We were very happy with our orders, I would like to try some other menu items in a future!
Konbini (コンビニ) – 312 5th Ave, New York, NY 10001