It may not be as famous, but it’s actually the only seafood-exclusive wholesale market in Tokyo.

If you wanted to get some sushi in Tokyo, odds are the first place you’d think to look is the Tsukiji Market. After all, it’s the largest seafood market in the world, and the neighborhood is the site of some truly delicious restaurants.

But what’s often overlooked is that Tsukiji isn’t the only fish market in Tokyo. The capitol’s Adachi Ward has one of its own, and the Adachi Market is actually the only wholesale center in Tokyo that deals exclusively in seafood and marine products (the Tsukiji market also has sections that sell other foodstuffs).

While the Adachi Market, located five minutes on foot from Senjuohashi Station, is a wholesale operation, there’s a row of restaurants that anyone can dine in. We rolled up after noon, and while the action at the market was already finished for the day, each and every one of the restaurants was filled with customers.

We stepped inside the restaurant named Tokudaya Shokudo and waited for a seat to open up. Looking over the menu, we found ourselves in a quandary, as the set meals with mixed sashimi, fried whitefish, teriyaki yellowtail, and stewed sea bass all tugged at our heartstrings. The fact that they were all affordably priced between 900 and 1,000 yen (US$8-$8.90) wasn’t making it any easier to settle on just one.

After about five minutes of solemn deliberation, we decided to splurge just a bit and go with the kaisen (mixed seafood) bowl for 1,300 yen. Once we were seated, we placed our order and waited for our food…which proved to be totally worth the wait.

While the bowl itself wasn’t terribly big, it was stuffed with roughly a dozen kinds of seafood, including uni (sea urchin), ikura (salmon roe), red snapper, shrimp, and other shellfish.

By the way, the bowl’s toppings aren’t heaped tall like that because there’s a spire of cheap rice in the middle, but because they’re sitting atop a mouth-watering scoop of negi toro (minced tuna)

Not only did everything taste great, it was quite a bit cheaper than what we’d expect to pay at Tsukiji. Something of comparable size and quality would likely run 2,000 yen or more at the more famous market.

▼ Miso soup with fish is also part of the set.

So while we’re still big Tsukiji fans, the next time we’re craving seafood, we might just end up heading to Adachi instead.

Restaurant information

Tokudaya Shokudo / 徳田屋食堂

Address: Tokyo-to, Adachi-ku, Senjuhashi-cho 50, Adachi-shi Kaijo

東京都足立区千住橋戸町50 足立市場内

Open 8 a.m.-2:50 p.m. (Monday-Thursday), 8 a.m.-3:40 p.m. (Friday-Saturday)

Closed Sundays, holidays, and days when the wholesale market is not in operation

Photos ©RocketNews24

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