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[WERBUNG/AD – Gifted Experience] Welcome to Foodie Friday! Today’s Suzuki NomNom Kitchen Review is part a special weekly feature from @whatandieeats, featuring a new restaurant recommendation every week. For more tasty food photos, be sure to follow her on Instagram.
Hello Munich Foodies and Happy Foodie Friday!
Let’s talk about home style cooking for a second. Everyone has those meals that remind them of someone special, whether it be your mother, your father, a favorite aunt or a grandparent. And usually it’s very hard to find a restaurant that can tap into that part of your brain and bring up those memories.
… Well, after my meal kindly hosted by Suzuki NomNom Kitchen, I can say I’ve finally found a place in Munich that excels in the art of home style cooking. In this post, I’ll share with you what we ate and what exactly made this meal so special!
Intro to Suzuki NomNom Kitchen + First Impressions
Located on one of the back streets of Isartor, Suzuki NomNom Kitchen is a small, centrally located eatery with a menu specializing in traditional Japanese rice bowls.
Side note: I have to admit I’m not very educated in the restaurant styles of Japan, but after visiting this place and speaking with a friend whose husband is Japanese, she explained to me that typically in Japan you won’t see a lot of restaurants that mix different dishes, (e.g. serving sushi and rice bowls). Instead, restaurants tend to specialize in one type of dish per place. Here at Suzuki NomNom Kitchen, it’s rice bowls that are the star of the show.
What We Ate: Starters
For starters, we tried the tofu salad. which is a mix of tofu, avocado and tomato marinated in the most delicious sauce ever (a tangy yet sweet mix of teriyaki and soy sauce).
This was hands down the best tofu I’ve ever had! It just melted in your mouth and was so perfectly marinated that I honestly couldn’t get enough.
We also ordered, of course I’m sure you guessed it: edamame! Now if you wonder why we constantly order this, I’ll tell you why.
Edamame is a very simple dish that can either be super enjoyable and flavorful or it can be dry and tasteless, so we like to order it at different places to see how creative they can be with a simple dish. Here, the edamame was served salty and slightly spiced with very thinly sliced peppers on top, which added a small bit of heat to the bite.
Main Courses
For our main courses, we tried the Seafood Zosui and Sukiyaki Don.
Zosui is a mild and thin Japanese rice soup which can be seasoned with miso or soy sauce and is often cooked with something like seafood, chicken, veggies or mushrooms.
This is where I tie in the part of tapping into family home cooking. I’m not Japanese but I can tell a home cooked when I taste it. After my first bite, I immediately felt the love that went into this dish and I started trying to peek into the kitchen because I knew that this was a mom or grandma cooking in the back. I could not get enough of it!
The same feeling came to mind when I had a bite of the Sukiyaki Don. The dish was beautifully prepared and equally as delicious. The meat was seasoned perfectly and the rice was just the right amount of sticky to say on my chopsticks. This was home cooking, something I definitely missed being so far from home. There was not a drop of food left on either plate.
Dessert
We moved on to dessert which was Green Tea Ice Cream and Daifku Mochi. These desserts perfectly finished up our dinner.
They were light and flavorful, but didn’t make us feel stuffed. Instead, we finished our meal just perfectly satisfied.
I have to admit, when I first got there, I was so hungry, I even told my fiancé that if this meal didn’t fill me up, I would go to McDonalds for a big juicy burger. No McDonalds needed though – I left Suzuki NomNom Kitchen feeling well fed and extremely satisfied!
Atmosphere
When I arrived, I was very surprised at how small the restaurant was. Even with the small size though, tables were spaced out adequately in compliance with COVID-19 safety regulations, with some empty space even left over.
Besides tasty dishes, Suzuki NomNom Kitchen also sells wine, plates and other trinkets from Japan. The decor here is simplistic, with small plants dotted around and hanging from the ceilings, along with a photo collage hanging on one of the walls. Overall, the vibe here is simple, but homey.
Overall Impressions of Suzuki NomNom Kitchen
After we finished our delicious meal, I was determined to go inside and find the person behind the food. Lo and behold, a sweet Japanese woman walked up to us and handed us Mochi to go. Turns out this was Yukiko Suzuki, the owner of the restaurant.
We had a brief talk about how delicious her food was and how amazed I was with the whole experience. She proceeded to talk to us about her daughter who runs the instagram page from LA and showed us photos on the wall (the collage I mentioned) which were photos of her family and daughter when she was young. The whole experience was great and I loved making connections with the owners and staff.
Overall, we really enjoyed our meal and would highly recommend them if you’re looking for tasty, home style Japanese food. If you visit them, please tell them we sent you!
To learn more about Suzuki NomNom Kitchen and to see their shop and menu, visit their website here.
