UniGirl

UniGirl (https://www.unigirlfl.com/) is an whimsically named food stall in Orlando’s relatively new Asian food hall Mills Market, located inside the former Tien Hung market on East Colonial Drive between Mills and Thornton Avenues.  It is even more adorable when you learn on the website that it was named after chef/owner William Shen’s shiba inu, a super-cute Japanese dog breed that looks like a fox.  A cartoony shiba inu appears as the official mascot of the restaurant.

UniGirl specializes in onigiri, tasty triangles of lightly salted koshihikari Japanese short grain rice (nicely chewy and sticky; the same kind of rice used for sushi), molded with some kind of filling, sprinkled with furikake seasoning (diced roasted seaweed and sesame seeds), wrapped with a piece of roasted seaweed to use like a handle.  They are served warm and best enjoyed that way.  I first tried onigiri a few years back at Ramen Takagi, still my favorite ramen-ya in the Orlando area, but nobody else has focused on onigiri until UniGirl opened in November 2024.  I had some fun on my first visit very recently!

This was the refreshing “daily mocktail” — so perfect on an unseasonably hot day in early April.  It was a blend of calamansi and passion fruit juices and jasmine, served over crushed ice, which we can all agree is the best kind of ice.  Calamansi is a tart little citrus fruit, similar to lime, that is very popular in Filipino cuisine, and passion fruit is one of my favorite fruits and flavors in general.

I got an order of three fried oysters while I waited, which were fried to order and to perfection.  These were listed on a chalkboard as a konbini special, with konbini serving as an abbreviation of konbiniensu sutoru, or “convenience store.”  Japanese convenience stores are supposed to be truly special places, 24/7 paradises where weary shoppers can pick up a variety of premade, fresh, tasty grab-and-go foods that are quite good, not just reheated junk food thrown together from the lowest-quality ingredients.  Even the 7-Eleven chain, ubiquitous in Japan, is known for really great food and snacks, far more over there than they are here.

Just as an aside, I am obsessed with lemons.  Whenever I get a lemon wedge served with my seafood, I eat it whole, just like normal people would eat an orange slice.

Anyway, the creamy, cool, slightly herby dipping sauce worked well with the golden, crispy exterior and almost creamy oyster centers.  The fry guy warned me they would be boiling lava hot, so I might want to wait a little while once they came up.  That was wise advice.  About five minutes later, they were still hot, but no longer capable of burning my mouth.  Did you hear about the hipster who burnt his tongue?  He ate UniGirl’s fried oysters before they were cool!

On to the star of the show: the onigiri!  I brought four onigiri home with me, but they had more than that to choose from, all individually wrapped and labeled.

As you can see, all the perfect little onigiri look similar, so thank goodness their disposable outer wrappers are labeled.  Once I got home and opened them up, I made a note of which was which.

The tuna onigiri in the top left was more like tuna salad, mixed with mayo (probably the eggy Kewpie brand) and a bit of mustard, rather than the raw ahi tuna I always expect, like you get in sushi or poke.  The miso tan tan (spicy crumbled pork) in the top right had a lot of flavor, including some mild spice.

The unagi (eel) onigiri in the bottom left was by far my favorite.  It was sweet and savory, not fishy at all.  In the bottom right, mentaiko (Alaskan pollock roe, from a fish in the cod family) was salty and spicy, with a subtle umami quality.  I first tried mentaiko years ago at Susuru, another unique Japanese restaurant here in Orlando, where they served mentaiko fries.

Finally, UniGirl advertised potato-egg salad as anther konbini special on the Saturday I went, and I thought it would be a nice little treat, especially since I’m such a fan of delicatessen fare.  I find it comforting that the Japanese like potato and egg salads too, and of course their versions are excellent.

Everything from UniGirl was a real treat — savory Japanese snacks meant for comfort and convenience, but so different from the conventional, familiar landmarks of Japanese cuisine like sushi, ramen, and udon.  I’m definitely not the only fan, because just the other day, on April 17th, 2025, UniGirl was awarded a prestigious Michelin Bib Gourmand award for “good quality, good value cooking.”  That is a huge honor for Chef William Shen (who also got an interview feature on the tire company’s website), for UniGirl, for the Mills Market (which houses a few other Michelin award-winning food stalls… STAY TUNED, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!), and for Orlando in general.