WHAT YOU WILL FIND AT TAWARA MART

Tawara Mart is a first-of-it’s kind Japanese store in NJ.

Owner Kiko Ishii worked in a renowned bakery in Tokyo, and has taken her love of baking to develop a creative bakery menu for her store. You will find original Japanese-style breads and pastries, many which are unique to Tawara Mart.

Tawara Mart also serves homemade prepared food that’s ready to take home, inspired by Japan’s ‘depa-chika’, department store food halls, and ‘conbini’, Japanese convenience stores. As well as sushi & omusubi & other well-known foods, here you will also find a style of Japanese cooking which is not represented well in America, which is ‘yoshoku’ cooking, or Japanese western-style food. Yoshoku food has been loved by the Japanese for so long that much of the food is now considered nostalgic.

Tawara Mart also carries Japanese groceries, which are carefully curated by Kiko and Greg, her husband and co-owner of Tawara Mart. The couple have backgrounds in design, which you will find evident across the store.

‘Zakka’ are Japanese small products, and Kiko & Greg try to find the most unusual items to carry in their store. These items are sometimes historical, nostalgic, useful, beautiful, or just plain silly.

Tawara Mart is just a small store in a strip mall in northern NJ, but it’s ambitions are big. Oh, and there’s also soft serve ice cream. Here you can find pineapple Dole Whip.