"Every so often, I get a hankering for sandoitchi, the Japanese sandwiches you could buy with ease at every convenience store in my motherland. However, it 's a rare sighting stateside, so I was excited to hear this spot made both beef and pork katsu sandos. I convinced Jamie W. to head over to Alameda to check it out with me for lunch.I wasn 't aware it was a shared space concept called SAGA Kitchen described ambitiously as a pan Asian food hall . It was actually three Japanese operations plus a dim sum spot. Koharu is the Japanese street food option with the other two being sushi and ramen. We ordered off a QR code menu and were served by one of those Jetsons style robots (photo: bit.ly/3Yx28lS).It did strike us how little human interaction there was even though two people were quite visibly handling the kitchen. Of course, we ordered the $19.95 Kurobuta Katsu Sando, a bit overpriced but the deep fried pork cutlet was deliciously juicy with just the right panko crust. The problem was that the Japanese milk bread was toasted, a big no no in a true sando (photo: bit.ly/3s0eKpt).But we devoured it nonetheless. More consistently successful was the $18.95 Soboro Don with Ebi Fry, a generous bowl of ground beef donburi with diced scrambled eggs, a side salad with miso dressing, and white rice topped with a couple of deep fried prawns (photo: bit.ly/3OtTMqw). Authentic enough and it came with a solid miso soup (photo: bit.ly/3s3GwkZ). But please don 't toast the bread.FOOD 4 stars...Japanese comfort food executed well...except for that toasterAMBIANCE 4 stars...plenty of room when we arrivedSERVICE 3.5 stars...well, the robot was programmed to be polite...we didn 't know about the humansTOTAL 4 stars...I could go for a sando nowRELATED Exploring Alameda? Here 's a collection of places I 've visited and reviewed: bit.ly/2Ik8mky"
