Osaka-Ya

Fabulous mochi desserts!! Decent prices and friendly service. Loved this place for 20+ years: wish I traveled to Sacramento more often! Echoing what everyone else says — our #1 go-to. It’s an easy few blocks off Highway 80, with plenty of parking nearby. Tons of fascinating combinations, including traditional Japanese herbs, cherry leaves, pickled plum, plus Matcha and coffee flavors. Some items are available frozen.

I had my first Osaka-Ya mochi experience from Oto’s Marketplace. A limited supply of select mochi flavors from Osaka-Ya are delivered there for sale. Butter mochi was unheard of for me so I was quite interested to try and it did not disappoint. Wanting to enjoy it again, I called Oto’s and was told the vendor was Osaka-Ya! Today I decided to visit Osaka-Ya and saw dorayaki?? Wait DORAYAKI?!?! Today God must be smiling down on me. I bought three (ones w/o mochi). Unfortunately butter mochi is only on Saturdays. It’ll be an excuse to come back here this weekend. Staff is very friendly. The shop is very small. Frozen snacks (sweet & savory) available. I wish they had more of a variety of JP snacks. I’m guessing flavors of mochi vary on days of the week. I wonder if its the same for the other in-house snacks as well. Gunther’s ice cream is served at a small window on the front left-side of shop door.

This is THE BEST local manju shop in California and quite possibly the best outside of Japan. This is the place to go for Japanese sweets. I like Osaka-Ya better than Fugetsu-Do in LA, better than Benkyodo in SF, better than Shuei-Do in San Jose, and better than Two Ladies Kitchen in Hawai'i. Not only are the flavors here delicate and well balanced, they also don't leave the mochi and manju slathered with katakuriko (potato starch) which is necessary for the making process, but not pleasant to touch or eat. My favorite manju are the Sakura, Shiso and Kinako. My partner loves the kinako bites which are small cubes of plain mochi covered in kinako (roasted soybean flour). I also love the peanut butter filled mochi. They have smooth and crunchy varieties as well as chocolate peanut butter and a double chocolate (chocolate filled chocolate mochi!) which is decadent and made with fancy-tasting chocolate. Weekends can get busy here, but there are things they only make on the weekends like they only make butter mochi on Saturdays. They also have specialty manju they only make around Girls Day (March 3) and Boy's Day aka Childrens Day (May 5). In the summer the snow cone window opens and you can get Japanese style shaved ice. Street parking is free and usually easy to find.

I'm very happy to have found a mochi-specialist shop. I really love seeing the beautiful mochi desserts on display, along with other Japanese (and Hawaiian-Japanese) snacks around the shop. The window outside sells shaved ice as well. Such a cute store! Red Bean Mochi (4 out of 5): We got three flavors, Hikicha (green tea with whole red bean), Shiso (purple with smooth red bean), and Inaka (white with whole red bean). Of these, I liked the Shiso the best. It had smooth red bean which I enjoyed more than the whole red bean, and it consisted of the chewy mochi we are all familiar with. The other two were not mochi, but a more breaded exterior (like halfway to a moon-cake exterier), though they were still good. Shaved ice (4 out of 5): We got pink lemonade and lime. As others mentioned, the extra small is a pretty decently good size. One big drawback is that they allow only one flavor per snowcone, which we did not quite understand why. The flavors were decently good, above average. Perhaps next time we will splurge for extras to make it a true japanese-style shaved ice. A drawback to this place is that there's no good place to sit or eat, or even garbage cans to dispose of cups when finished. So instead, we walked a couple blocks down to a park for benches.