Oak and Orange cafe opens in Mineola
The Japanese egg sando at Oak and Orange in Mineola is a creamy and fluffy take on a convenience store favorite. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
Long Island may be the epicenter of egg sandwiches, but until now, it's been difficult to find the genre's rising star, the Japanese egg sando.
This convenience store legend is different from your typical New York deli offering. Shamelessly creamy and served on fluffy white milk bread, the Japanese egg salad sandwich is a humble affair with serious foodie cred. At 7-11 stores in Tokyo, it's wrapped in triangular plastic bags and sold as a refrigerator food, but the sandwich is now getting the gourmet treatment across the States. And you'll find a sizable one at the new Oak and Orange cafe in Mineola.
Owner Sumiti Uppal Malhotra fell in love with the egg salad sando while on her two-week honeymoon across Japan a few years ago. The Long Island native has a background in marketing, but her husband Ramit Malhotra's family owns the storied Indian restaurant Akbar in Garden City (currently on Newsday's Top 100 Long Island restaurants list). The family purchased the Mineola space in 2018, among a stretch of businesses surrounding the train station and NYU Langone Hospital. They opened the cafe in the space in November.
Oak and Orange is still in the soft opening phase, but the Japanese sando is a highlight of the current menu. To prepare the egg salad, the chef boils the eggs until they're jammy and runs them through a machine to separate the yolks from the whites. The eggs are mixed with scallions and a generous amount of Kewpie mayo, and set around thin wisps of pickled cucumber that add freshness. The crustless milk bread sticks to the roof of your mouth and leaves you with a faintly sweet flavor.
In addition to a small number of salads and baked goods, Oak and Orange serves an Indian street sandwich called the Bombay Sandy, which features chutney and tandoori chicken.
Oak and Orange also serves coffee from Southdown, and has a small market that focuses on artisanal food products from women- and minority-owned vendors.
The cafe has limited weekday hours for now, but plans to add breakfast service.
Oak and Orange, 91 Mineola Blvd., Mineola, 516-746-3809, theoakandorange.com. Open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.
