Mr. Hironobu Tsujiguchi (辻口博啓) is the most well-known pastry chef in Japan. His sweets boutiques in Tokyo, including its flagship store Mont St. Clair, are always filled with clients who look for the best French-style pastry products. After his success in Tokyo, he opened two new style units, called “LE MUSEE DE H”, in Ishikawa prefecture where he was from. One of them is accommodated in Ishikawa Prefecture Museum of Art (石川県立美術館) building, based in Kanzawa.
Le Musee de H offers an interesting “modern tea ceremony” program produced by the master chef Mr. Tsujiguchi. On the program “Concept G”, “marriage” of Japanese tea and French-style sweets is expressed in a designed modern “tea room” which is attached to the sweets boutique and cafe floor of Le Musee de H. Mr Tsujiguchi coordinated the space and the program as a whole for Concept G, from a course of tea ceremony services to tea cups, interior of the modern tea room. Let’s try a new world of Japanese tea and Japanese tea ceremony!
“G” of Concept G represents “Gyokuro” (玉露), the highest quality brand of Japanese greaan tea from Kyoto. During the course, Gyokuro green tea is served 3 times in each different way in addition to seasonal tea upon starting and grilled tea at the end. The chef Mr. Tsujiguchi selected 3 plates of sweets that are the best match with Gyokuro tea.
Welcome plate, ice cream with Japanese sweets specialities such as kinako (きなこ, soy beans sweet powder) and kuromitsu (黒蜜, black syrup etc), served with seasonal “Sakura tea”, made from cherry tree leaves.
A staff brought to me a pot with a small candle and a plate of green leaves on top as well as a wooden stick. This is for whay?
It is the first surprise...I was asked to have these tea leaves grilled by myself while enjoying cups of Gyokuro green tea. This is the first time for me (and maybe many of Japanese clients come here) to roast tea leaves. It is actually required carefull attention to mix these leaves time by time so they are evenly burned. Sometimes a few leaves were out from the plate and another leaves were burned too much...
During Concept G program, tea is prepared with this traditional-style tea making tools by staff.
The first cup of Gyokuro green tea is served with a small cup like Sake. Surprisingly the taste of the highest quality tea is totally different from what we have usually as green tea. It is rich and includes “umami” (うまみ). The shiny black cup for the best green tea served on a silver plate. This is like art...
The second cup of Gyokuro tea, following the surprise, is not same with the first cup, even though they are from same tea pot and leaves.
The main dessert plate includes three fantastic sweets. The cake is Gateau Opera “Sakura flavor”.
Another surprise was a small plate sesrved...
It is tea leaves for the seasonal tea. Normally we just throw away tea leaves after tea is made, while as for the special seasonal sakura tea, it is edible and good with a drop of soy sauce (shoyu)! It was enough good and like boild leafy vegetable.
Finally this is the tea which “I grilled by myself”. Of course it is absolutely tasty too.
I really enjoyed for apploximately an hour of Concept G world and surely I did discover great combination of Japanese tea and very nice sweets. This is what we cannot have in Tokyo but the concept really well matchs with Kanazawa city’s atmosphere. So it is better to travel to Kanazawa even from Tokyo.
Concept G program is takens place every hour from 11h00 to 17h00 at Le Musee de H in Kanazawa. Advance reservation is recommendable to secure a time slot.
After the tea ceremony, let’s try to find some cakes and cookies for souvenir.
Some products are made with local ingredients. Cake in Kaga Bo-cha (Kaga stick grilled tea), Neige Shoyu (square snow-cookies, soya sauce flavor), Neige Nakajimana (square snow-cookies, local leaf vegetable flavor), Goroshima Kintoki (local sweet potatos) cooky
Concept G, modern tea ceremony program will be followed by a newer post about another unit of Le Musee de H in Wakura Onsen town.
Le Musee de H, Kanazawa (in the building of Ishikawa Prefecture Museum of Art)
*No museum entrance fee required to visit onlyt the sweets shop.
Address: 2-1, Dewa-machi, Kanazawa-city, Ishikawa Prefecture
Website: http://www.kagaya.co.jp/le_musee_de_h/contents/kanazawaConcept.html
*The place is in Kanazawa, Hokuriku region. (not in Tokyo) For general information about Kanazawa and how to get there, please visit below link.
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2011/04/about-kanazawa-city-where-food-lovers-should-not-miss-on-travel-in-japan.html
大きな地図で見る
Accommodations close to the sites mentioned on this post
|
"World Water Day" is coming on 22nd of March. TAP Project 2011 will be taken place during 19 to 27th March 2011 in Japan. The project was started in New York in 2007 and this is the third year of TAP Project introduced in Japan.
As per the official homepage of TAP PROJECT, one out of five children under the age of five grows up in an environment where the water is unsafe to drink. TAP PROJECT help UNICEF with providing access to clean and safe water.
How can we participate in the event? During the TAP PROJECT period 19 to 27th March 2011, visit a participant restaurant and donate Yen 100 or more for the water served to you. It is very easy!
TAP PROJECT donnation from Japan will be used for supporting to provide clean and safe water as well as basic sanitation services in Madagascar.
********************** UPDATE 15 March 2011 *********************************************
Seeing the severe natural disaster happend on 11March 2011, TAP Project organizer has changed supporting target to victims of earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku region, Japan.
***************************************************************************************************
Here I list up some participant restaurants in Tokyo from my previous posts but much more in town.
Waketokuyama (分けとく山)
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2011/02/waketokuyama-%E5%88%86%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8F%E5%B1%B1-japanese-michelin-2011-.html
Restaurant I
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2011/01/made-in-tokyo-french-restaurant-i-%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3i-by-keisuke-matsushima.html
La Bettola (ラベットラ)
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2010/09/la-bettora-da-ochiai%E3%83%A9%E3%83%99%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%83%A9%E3%83%80%E3%82%AA%E3%83%81%E3%82%A2%E3%82%A4-casual-italian-in-ginza%E9%8A%80%E5%BA%A7.html
Aux Bacchanales
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2008/07/french-caf-aux-.html
Hanasansho (花山椒)
http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2008/02/hanasanshou-mic.html
Other restaurants can be found at the official site. (in Japanese)
http://www.tapproject.jp/restaurant/
This is the sign of the project participant restaurants, on table.
Official site TAP PROJECT 2011: http://www.tapproject.jp
Chinese New Year celebrating weeks is almost ended for 2011. But the one of the biggest China Towns in Japan can never be a quite place. Whether it is Summer or Winter, weekend or weekdays Yokohama China Town is always filled with tourists and local diners.
Goku Tea House is peaceful oasis amid the busy streets of Yokohama China Town. It is just a stone throw from one of the most popular tourist spots, Kantei (Guan Di) byo (関帝廟). The tea house has two floors; tea making tools and leaf shop on the ground floor and the cozy tea salon on the upper floor. Goku Tea House is far away from bustle of the exitotic town and is filled with Chinese folk arts and objects.
Needless to say, the Chinese tea house offers really wide selections of every kinds of Chinese tea, categorized by color, blue (example: popular oolong), green, red (like Engish tea), flower tea etc. It is fun to choose one from the list but it can never be done within a short time...
Finally I took Longjing tea in a glass cup and speciality "parfait" called "Tonkou" (敦煌, Dunhuang), named after the major city on the Silk Road in China.
Tonkou Parfait: Tapioca pearls, Chinese herb jelly and a piece of cherry wrapped by litchee on top of ice cream.
Boild water is available from an electric kettle on table. That makes us stay in Goku Tea House for long time. Enjoy having Chinese dessert, chatting or reading as your peaceful tea time with cups of tea in the Asian atmosphere, as long as you can or want...
During lunch time, it also offers lunch set such as Chinese noodle, pork rice bowl at reasonable price.
Of course the cozy tea house attracts many of local people and it might be fully occupied for a while of mid-day. Goku Tea House has two more units in Yokohama China Town; one Tea tools boutique and another Tea Salon.
Cafe name: Goku Tea House (悟空茶荘)
Address: 130 Yamashitacho, Naka-Ku, Yokohama-city
Website (Japanese) : http://www.goku-teahouse.com/index.php?page=shop02
大きな地図で見る
Saint Valentine's day is commercially made in Japan as the date when girls give chocolate to their loved boys. For a few weeks until the 14th of February, sale of chocolate is the most increased in a year. You will find special corners of chocolate gift everywhere in this season. Some people enjoy finding favourite chocolate brand from wide selections of high quality chocolate in this season not for gift to someone but for herself.
I found another attempt of Saint Valentine's day at a supermarket. It is "Chocolate Brewery" or chocolate beer made by collaboration between a major Japanese beer producer Sapporo and a well-known high quality chocolate brand ROYCE in Hokkaido region.
Once I had chocolate beer in Alsace, French city but where is influenced by German culture and is beer-production region. The unique point for the case in Japan is that the beer is made with ROYCE brand chocolate which is solely established as a high quality chocolate producer from Hokkaido.
Anyway let's taste the chocolate beer in Japan. There are two types by taste; Sweet and Bitter. I took Sweet type for me.
Color is close to black color or dark brown chocolate.
Taste, YES, it surely and interestingly has CHOCOLATE flavor.
Instead of sweet flavor, bitter taste is felt less than usual beer.
Its alcohol ratio is 5% less than normal beer.
Uhhh...in other words, it could be sensed as if it was soft drink as same as Coca-cola.
Be careful not to have it too much. It is alcohol drink...
Chocolate Brewery SAPPORO x ROYCE is not regular product. It means that it is sold for limited time and limited amount. How much and how long is not announced though. The product is sold at some liquor shops, convenience stores and supermarkets.
Official website of the product Chocolate Brewery (Japanese) :
http://www.sapporobeer.jp/chocolat/
Official website of ROYCE (English), though the beer is not sold at the chocolate boutique maybe:
http://www.e-royce.com/english/
A Happy New Year 2011!
Celebrate a new year with a glass of nice alcohol drink must be similar in almost everywhere around the world. In my case, here we have a bottle of “Peach Wine”(桃ワイン). That is made by a winery in the most known wine region of Japan, Koshu Katsunuma (甲州 勝沼), Yamanashi (山梨).
The wine is made from 100% peach juice from the Yamanshi region also being proud of high quality fresh peach. Apart from 4 % of alcohol and slightly sparkling bubbles in the wine, the taste is really like fresh peach juice, rich fruits flavour but not too sweet. The bottle cap with a wired stopper also makes us believe that it is peach juice rather than wine.
The winery produced the Peach Wine only 8000 bottles. I hope I can get one more bottle but it seems to be sold out already…
Let’s wait another chance to find it! Anyway it was a good opportunity to know an interesting unique product from the Japanese winery, Koshu Katsunuma.
The producer winery Fujiclair usually offers normal wine made from grapes from red wine to sparkling one. They are all limited number of production. It also welcomes winery visit in Katsunuma Koshu.
Official website of Fujiclair (Japanese version)
http://www.fujiclairwine.jp
Winery address: 2770-1 Shimoiwasaki, Katsunuma-cho, Koshu-city, Yamanashi
大きな地図で見る
Tokyo Hotel Deals
Search 100+ Tokyo hotel sites, Compare hotel & flight Deals!
Can you imagine a cafe where we are able to enjoy "Japanese green tea" as we have coffee at Starbucks cafe? That is KOOTS GREEN TEA at Midtown in Roppongi. The small cafe offers various choices of Japanese tea (日本茶), hot or ice, "latte"(with milk), size "small/tall/grande"or smoothy... exactly in the same way with one we often see at coffee shops.
Here I thought "maccha" looks like Japanese "espresso"!
The size is described as "single" or "double"...
The bitter taste of maccha is alos similar to espresso coffee...
Another menu, hoji-cha (Japanese grilled tea) latte
KOOTS GREEN TEA has two units in central Tokyo and provides selections of Japanese tea and light meal such as rice balls, cakes all of which are good matched with Japanese green tea.
Why do not you enjoy Japanese tea and sweets at KOOTS GREEN TEA ? as if you have a cup of coffee and a muffin at Starbucks or any other coffee shops in your country.
Cafe name: KOOTS GREEN TEA 
Website: http://www.koots.jp
Address & Location
<Roppongi> B1 floor Tokyo Midtown, 9-7-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo
大きな地図で見る
<Azabu Juban> 2-1-3 Azabu Juban, Minato-ku, Tokyo
大きな地図で見る
HUA TAI TEA (華泰茶荘) is a boutique specialized in Chinese and Taiwanies tea 
as well as tea making products. The origin of the boutique is back to 1842 in Taiwan. In Tokyo, the tea house as a whole occupies four floors for tea shop, tea salon and private space. The tea salon is located on the third floor and is in cozy atomoshpere with Chinese interior decotration. It serves nice selections of Chinese tea from the tea shop, dim-sum and Chinese desserts.
Of course, wide selections of tea (categorized such as green, white tea, flower tea, produced region, served by glass, mug or tea pot ...) are offered from the boutique and their staff are happy to answer our questions or to help with choosing what kind of tea we will have.
Longing tea from China, I selected. That is from one of the most famous Chinese tea region. It is fresh green tea. A pot for boild water is set on every table. Guests are able to pour the water into their pot at preferable interval of timing. Have tea as much as you like...
Authentic dim-sum are also available there. A good choice for light volume lunch.These dishes makes the tea time more joyfull and last longers.
If you do not have enough extra space in stomach for dim-sum, several kinds of Chinese desserts can be an option.
After a half minutes from arrival, you will feel as if you were in China or Taiwan, not Shibuya (knowns as noizy nightspots and young fashion town) in Tokyo. The quiet and cozy tea salon is an oasis in Shibuya.
That is also a good idea to buy tea leaves at the boutique, if you like the tea you had at the tea salon.
Cafe name: HUA TAI TEA
Address: 1-18-6 Dogenzaka, Shibuya, Tokyo
Website address: http://www.chinatea.co.jp
大きな地図で見る
Maybe you already know the name of "Mount Fuji (富士山)", the most well-known mountain in Japan, not olny for the highest peak in Japan but also for the beatiful shape like a fan, spreading wider toward the end as dipicted in scenes of Ukiyoe (浮世絵) art.
How romantic if you can bring something from Mount Fuji as a souvenir, omiyage (お土産) ? This bottoled wated must be one of them. Rain drops on the famous mountain runs and is filtered though 7 geological layers inside of the volcanic mountain. The water becomes rich in mineral called “vanadium” and is put into PET-bottle with the iconic label of Mount Fuji in red by sunshine.
The taste is mellow and sweet, as likely to be Japanese natual water.
According to ths official website, so far the product is available at a gift shop in Hotel New Otani, Kiosk in JR Tokyo station and six units of Supermarket Sakagami in Tokyo otherwise through a Japanese online store specialized for mineral water. I hope that the nice souvenir of Japan will become available at more places around Mount Fuji and in Tokyo.
Websites related to this story:
Fuji Shimizu JAPAN WATER (富士清水) - http://www.fujiseisui.com
Hotel New Otani - http://www.newotani.co.jp/en/tokyo/
Supermarket Sakagami shop list - http://www.sakagami-cl.co.jp/store/index.html
Aqua bar style (online shopping site for water) - http://aquabar-stylestore.com/?tid=9&mode=f6
