The Ultimate 10 Course Gourmet Meal from 7-Eleven Japan
A Japanese convenience store dining experience
Forget the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the real Trinity is Lawson, Family Mart, and 7-Eleven, three convenience stores that you’ll find smothered all over Japan that put the ‘convenience’ back in the store. They’re everywhere, sometimes even the same franchise on opposing sides of the same street, selling everything from alcohol to underwear. What they do better than any other store that has a claim to convenience is their food.
To eat at a Japanese convenience store is a dining experience that everyone who visits the country must try, and I decided to try it a little harder than most, creating an omakase experience with ten courses purchased from 7-Eleven. In its direct translation, omakase means ‘I leave it up to you,’ giving the chef free reign to make you whatever he pleases. There are restaurants with no menus catered to this omakase style of dining and it is not uncommon for people to go to sushi restaurants and ask for an omakase meal.
To the best of my knowledge, 7-Eleven isn’t sentient. It can’t make decisions as to who or what I should eat and therefore I had to take some of the decisions into my own hands. As such, I chose ten dishes that I was either interested in or were of a size that I wouldn’t have to throw out at the end of the meal because wasting food is something that I disagree with. It cost me 2690 yen which is about $30 AUD, cheap for an omakase meal but somewhat more expensive than if I had just gone out to a restaurant.
But then I wouldn’t have written this story and you wouldn’t be reading it and then where would we all be? Certainly not here, together, enjoying the finest of food that the convenience stores have to offer. And while this was my 7-Eleven dining experience, there is nothing stopping you from going out there and building your own.
Assorted Pickles 1/5
It has been reported that eating something pickled before a meal aids digestion and so, with that in mind, I started with the assorted pickles. Eggplant, cucumber, daikon, and cabbage, it had a lemon flavour despite containing nothing that remotely looked or smelled like lemons and got worse the longer that I ate it.
Potato Salad 2.5/5
This is a staple of Japanese cuisine. It was brought over by the Germans and perfect by the Japanese and you can find it on any izakaya menu. This one was spectacularly average, with the potatoes somehow being dry despite being slathered in enough mayonnaise to constrict the blood flow in my arteries. The addition of carrots, however, was a nice touch.
Hijiki Seaweed, Miso, & Tofu Salad 3/5
Another salad on the menu because I’m obviously looking after my figure, this was the first thing I ate and thought, huh, okay, this actually tastes like something I would order again. The tofu added a nice texture and the flavour of the seaweed was strong but balanced quite nicely with the miso, making for a neutral but pleasurable dish.
Tamagoyaki 1/5
Tamagoyaki, or egg omelette, is one of my favourite dishes in Japanese cuisine and I’ll often judge a restaurant based on the quality of it as it takes time and talent to master. Even with an abundance of time, 7-Eleven has not mastered their tamagoyaki. It had a cheesy taste despite the presence of nothing but egg and enough anti-ageing creams to make my mother proud.
Octopus & Broccoli Salad 4/5
This dish was picked purely based on my love of taco, or octopus, in Japanese. It was a surprising little number that mixed octopus, edamame, broccoli, and potato with a very Japanese sauce known as ‘pesto’ and as confused as my brain was when I first tasted it, this was delicious and I will absolutely buy it again.
Salt-Grill Mackerel 4/5
Mackerel is the fishiest of fishes and fish can be pretty fishy. That is to say, it’s not for everyone, but my Scottish heritage means that I would inject it straight into my veins. This mackerel fillet was another shining star of the meal and while I enjoyed the hell out of it, I don’t relish the economies of what selling a fish for three hundred yen is doing to our oceans.
Goma-Ae 5/5
While this spinach salad might not have been the best meal of the whole experience, it gets such a high score because I have been served worse goma-ae from restaurants in both Australia and Japan. It does beg the question that if 7-Eleven can do this so right, what the hell are these other places doing so wrong?
Pasta with Prawn, Mayo, and Cod Roe 4/5
This dish made no sense to me whatsoever and I had to order it because of that. It was like a creamy seafood pasta with shredded cucumber and the occasional prawn for hope. If I had ordered this from an Italian restaurant then sure, I might have had some questions, but from a 7-Eleven in Japan, I don’t think anything could be a more fitting combination of cultures and flavours.
Onigiri 2/5
These rice balls are a staple of convenience stores and make for a perfect portable snack. The first one, a sardine number, fell apart before I had a chance to attack it. The second one, plum and kombu, had more structural integrity but a disappointing amount of filling, leaving me feeling like I had been somehow cheated out of the best part of the dish.
Fruit Sandwich 5/5
Finally, the dessert course, and I don’t know who decided to take fruit and whipped cream and stick them both between cheap white bread, but I want to meet that mad bastard and kiss them. This shouldn’t work. The bread should be soggy, the cream should be spewing out from all sides, and yet it maintains its structural integrity and is not only delicious but something so unequivocally Japanese.
