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Despite the COVID-19 crisis, new restaurants continued to open up in the Burquitlam area, including one I was really excited about. Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba, an international chain originated from Japan. You may have been to their other location downtown on Seymour Street. I did, and every time I walked away with a belly full of carbs and I didn’t regret it one bit. Opening their second location in Burquitlam means it’s much closer to home and more accessible to me. Even though dine-in service was not available at the time, I had to order take-out from them to support.

Note: This is a review of a take-out order during COVID-19. Since restaurants are operating under different circumstances, menu items and dining experiences may be different.

Food

Kokoro specializes something called mazesoba. It’s a dry noodle dish using fresh multi-grain noodle that is somewhere between ramen and udon. Kokoro makes these noodles fresh in-house. Most of their mazesoba bowls come with spicy minced pork and a combination of toppings such as minced garlic, green onions, seaweed flakes, and ground saba fish. A lot of those also come with a raw egg yolk, but for take out it’s been replaced by half soft boiled egg. To enjoy the noodle bowls, you stir everything together thoroughly. In fact, when you dine in, you could order a scoop of rice at the end of your meal to ensure you pick up every last bit of sauce.

For the four of us, we ordered one bowl each, including three different mazesoba bowls and one rice bowl to add variety, and a chicken karaage for appy.

The Chicken Karaage was quite good. Nothing outstanding about it, but it’s good. The seasoning was on point and flavourful. It’s not really crispy anymore, since it had travelled for about 20 minutes to get to our home, but the meat was moist. And I imagine it would be very tasty when eaten fresh out of a fryer. You have the option of a honey mayo or spicy mayo, and we chose the spicy mayo. It had just a subtle kick to it.

Niku Mazesoba is their signature item and bestseller. In addition to the spicy minced pork, there’s also slow-braised pork chashu. It’s more like pork belly pieces. The pork chashu/belly was tender and flavourful. The minced pork had chili flakes in it and you can definitely taste the heat. It’s rich, with lots of umami flavour. It would’ve been even richer with the raw egg yolk but this was just as good as I remembered.

We tried two more flavours of mazesoba. True to its dry noodle concept, the Curry Mazesoba brings the flavour with the addition of Japanese curry powder, not a sauce. Surprisingly, after mixing thoroughly, it tasted just like Japanese sauce, and no gritty bits from the powder. The curry flavour worked really well with the minced pork and toppings. In fact, I think this has become another go-to flavour of mazesoba bowl for me.

Next, the Tantan Mazesoba is inspired by the Chinese tantan noodles, of which the main flavour profile comes from the sesame sauce. This was no different. The sesame sauce added extra richness and nutty note to the noodles. I thought it’s just OK, but Mr., Mama Lam and Papa Lam all preferred this over the curry one.

And lastly, a change of pace, and we switched to the Ginza Don. It has similar toppings like the mazesoba bowls: spicy minced pork, green onions, seaweed, soft-boiled egg and bamboo shoots. The difference is that it also has fried chicken, and it’s on a bed of rice instead of noodles. It was actually quite good as a rice bowl. The chicken was the same as the chicken karaage, and I did appreciate the addition of some mixed salad greens and avocado to bring some freshness. But at a restaurant that specializes in fresh noodle bowls, I probably won’t order this again.

Besides food, we also added two drinks to our order. Others have raved about the Yogurt Refresher so I had to order it to try. I got the Peach Yogurt Refresher and I must say, I was disappointed. Yes, it was refreshing, but it’s so light in flavour I really didn’t think it’s worth the money. It’s $5.25 and it tasted like soda water with a tiny dash of peach flavouring. I shook it a lot, trying to mix it well but I just couldn’t taste a lot. Couldn’t even taste the yogurt drink that Mr. and I love very much.

Another drink we got was the Tokyo Iced Milk Tea. Black tea flavour was quite nice. It reminded me a little of HK style milk tea, but this seemed to have more milk than HK milk tea. If you were to order Niku Mazesoba, Zenbu Mazesoba or Ginza Don, you can make it a combo and order this drink with it. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, getting this take-out totally satisfied my craving for this special noodle bowl. Their food is a bit on the pricey side, though, and all the mazesoba bowls are relatively similar with just a few variations. However, if you are a carb lover, you will love this. Because the food travelled for some time, it wasn’t as hot as I’d like. Now I just have to visit the new restaurant soon and get myself a piping hot bowl of mazesoba! Dine-in menu is also bigger, which includes ramen. And hopefully I will finally get to try its Hokkaido creme cone.

Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba
#109 – 531 North Road, Coquitlam
604-917-0719
menyakokoro.com