
Bento-Ya Kitchen is popular among homesick Japanese expats, and it is not hard to understand why. I love their different bowls, don, of rice topped with tuna or salmon, but their zaru-soba (cold buckwheat noodles) is also nice. This is solid, no-frills Japanese food at a price that won’t break your wallet. There’s a bookshelf with Japanese cartoons, and the restrooms have Japanese toilets with lots of different functions.
Next door, there’s a Japanese grocery store, Gourmet-Ya, which is affiliated with Bento-Ya. This is where I go to stock up on ice cream mochi and other Japanese grocery items, such as roasted sesame dressing from Kewpie which is one of those things I cannot be without. I just saw on their website, that they offer same day delivery in Dubai, which will most definitely get my mochi consumption completely out of control:)