Cafe Zaiya is a Japanese cafe that has two stores in the New York City areas of Midtown and East Villiage. They opened a small outlet cafe in the Kinokuniya bookstore — bringing together two contemporary Japanese cultural businesses in the heart of Manhattan. Here, they serve a variety of traditional Japanese food such as green tea cakes, onigiri, sushi, rice bowls, pastries, green tea, and more.

Onigiri are essentially rice balls, in which sticky white rice is formed into either triangular, cylindrical, or oval shapes filled with meats, seafood, or vegetables, and wrapped in seaweed. Seaweed in Japan is referred to as nori.

Rice bowls, also called donburi in Japan, is a rice bowl that is filled with rice in a mixture of either fish, meat, vegetables, seafood, tofu, and more. There are many different varieties to tailor consumer’s palates.