FamilyMart Opens Outlet In JB’s City Square Mall, Here’s What To Buy There

Crampedness aside, this outlet has all the basics of a FamilyMart: perishable food and drinks stored in chillers, a shelf of pastries, a few aisles of snacks and hot food stations. There's also an oden counter next to the cashier.

We zip straight to the onigiri chiller, which carries FamilyMart’s best-selling seaweed-wrapped onigiris with fillings like Salted Salmon and Tuna Mayo. There’s also our personal favourite from FamilyMart, which we always make it a point to buy when we’re in Japan: the Ajitsuke Tamago Onigiri, which has half an onsen egg nestling in a ball of soy-simmered rice. At the current promotional price of RM2.92 a piece (around S$1), it is even cheaper than the one in Japan.

FamilyMart is holding a Sakura Festival from February 20 to April 2 to celebrate the spring season, and they’re offering pink food in the same hue as the cherry blossom and sakura-flavoured snacks. This includes a Sakura Ebi Chahan Onigiri, which has savoury ebi fry dotting a sakura-dyed pink onigiri. Pretty.

This being a Malaysian FamilyMart outlet, there is also banana leaf-wrapped nasi lemak going for a cheap and cheerful RM2.20 ($0.70) per packet. Cute.

There’s also an Insta-worthy dessert Sakura Lychee Sando (Japlish for ‘sandwich’), which has pink bread hugging a layer of cream and sakura-infused jelly pressed with slivers of lychee flesh.

In true Japanese style, FamilyMart sells a range of dessert sandwiches in flavours like Strawberry, Mikan (a Japanese citrus fruit similar to a small mandarin orange) and Blueberry, which are all displayed in a tantalising row in a chiller.

Fancy a savoury sandwich? There are picks like a fried Chicken Katsu Sandwich with white bread.

There’s also a seasonal sakura cheesecake topped with a single dried blossom.

And a parfait-style strawberry shortcake.

Tapow these petite Hanjuku Cheese soufflé cheesecakes, which you can finish in two bites.

We are thrilled to discover two hard-to-find Earl Grey and Rose Honey Milk Tea flavours from Chun Cui He, the hit Taiwanese beverage line that’s best known for its creamy milk tea. They are RM8 ($2.70) each, which is around the same price as those at 7-Eleven outlets in Singapore, where a bottle of Chun Cui He goes for $2.80.

There’s a chiller dedicated to bottled Japanese teas, including FamilyMart’s own brand of barley and jasmine teas, as well as milk tea from Japanese beverage giant Kirin.

The shop’s ready-made frappes are popular: the shelf is almost picked clean of the chicly-packaged drinks, which come in two flavours, Cookies and Strawberry.

Otherwise, this FamilyMart’s drinks selection is pretty standard: you can buy fresh milk, fruit juices Yakult, and Thai Yakult-like yogurt drink Betagen in one-litre bottles too.

You can buy a selection of frozen tofu and dumplings too (but they are not Japanese imports). They are pretty random things to get from a FamilyMart though; we say save your ringgit for their more interesting snacks and light bites, and hit up a supermarket for your groceries.

One of the highlights of visiting FamilyMart is to order their oden, which is served piping hot. An adorable Japanese-style pictorial menu earnestly explains the type of oden ingredients available. This includes fish cakes, daikon (Japanese radish), corn, onsen eggs and lobster balls, which all simmer in a tray of broth on skewers and are plucked out upon order.

You’re required to pick a ‘Starter Bowl’ of oden when you order, which contains broth and one basic ingredient. There are three types to choose from: Ajitsuke Tamago Set (RM3, or S$1), Fish Cake Set (RM3, or $1) and Udon Set (RM5, or S$1.70).

While we have only come across soy-simmered dashi broth when we tried FamilyMart’s oden in Japan, JB’s outlets has a spicy Tom Yam broth option.

We choose the original soup (we’re purists like that), but found the broth too salty, flat and lacking the delicate sweet-savouriness of good dashi broth unlike FamilyMart in Japan. The ingredients available are also mostly fish cake-based. We wish there are bouncy chunks of konjac, though thankfully, the onsen egg we ordered is at least gooey-yolked.

There’s also a shelf of sliced bread and buns in a corner of the shop.

It sells Japanese-style bakery-style roti like thick-sliced Matcha Adzuki toast.

FamilyMart’s signature Sofuto soft serve cones are also sold here, in two flavours: Hojicha Latte and Matcha. And it’s only RM2.90 ($1) for a cone, which is almost the same price as a McDonald’s basic vanilla soft serve cone in Singapore, but more gourmet.

There’s also imported “premium ice cream” going for RM7.17 ($2.40) each.

While the shop mostly sells foodstuff, it also stocks a range of toiletries like travel-sized shampoos, plus a shelf dedicated to a Disney collaboration with Thai make-up brand Baby Bright, which has Winnie-the-Pooh-themed lipsticks going for RM39.90 ($13.25) each.

FamilyMart JB City Square, Lot J2-18, Level 2, Johor Bahru City Square, 106-108, Jalan Wong Ah Fook, 80000 Johor Bahru, Johor. Open daily 10am-10pm. www.familymart.com.my.