The Quintessence of Ham

Long lines, bland sand­wiches, mushy pizza. What’s not to like?

My Korean-savvy infor­mant tells me this place is Korean-managed, but they def­i­nitely play up the Japan­ese angle more than most other Japan­ese restau­rants in the area. In addi­tion to the usual sus­pects, for exam­ple, the sushi bar offers “Japan­ese” mack­erel, “Japan­ese” snap­per, etc. They run some mildly exotic spe­cials: spot­ted sar­dines were excel­lent, but wasabi-marinated octo­pus tasted like bait (and not of the fresh variety).

Their kitchen also does good work: deep fried minia­ture octo­puses are nice, as is the unagi don.

There’s an entire aisle of dried seaweed!

This Korean super­mar­ket has excel­lent (and cheap) pro­duce, live blue crabs, and a freezer sec­tion whose vast­ness is exceeded only by its mys­tery. They also sell the Chi­nese black vine­gar that keeps Sarah happy. There’s a reg­u­lar H Mart in Mer­ri­field, but I pre­fer the “Super H” in Fairfax.