About food in Japan

Laduree, the French patisserie finally arrived in Tokyo

The prestigious patisserie in Paris opened its branch in Tokyo finally.
Laduree was considered among famous patisseries in Paris as the last one that has not been arrived yet in Tokyo. Pierre Herme, Jean-Paul Hevin, Dalloyau, Fauchon; they are names we can find in Tokyo.

There had been rumors for last few years about with which company the icon of Paris patisserie would work in Tokyo.

Laduree's first cafe and boutique in Tokyo is located on the second floor of Mitsukoshi department store in Ginza. The estabilished retailer is not a surprise for Japanese as a partner of Laduree. At the corner of Ginza 4-chome crossing, where two luxury brand shopping streets meet each other, it is the best location to be the most prestigious tea salon in this country.

I had been waiting for a chance to visit the tea salon since it opened two month ago.
Just after the opening, people had been making a long que for long hours!
It depends on time and day whether the salon seats are full or not.
But at least a long long que(around one hour or longer) is still daily event for the boutique to buy macarons and other Laduree sweets.

The price difference between Paris and Tokyo is tiny.
The flavour is almost same even though it is less selections in Tokyo.
It is not a bad idea to enjoy taste of Paris in Tokyo.

Cafe and boutique name: Laduree
Address: Ginza Mitsukoshi 4-6-16 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Italien cafe - Sol Levante

Sol Levante is a cafe featuring Italian sweets.
It is located in Omodatesando, just a block behind the busy 246 street. In spite of that, the residential area is very calm.

The cafe offers a sweets boutique at the entrance, where we can find various but all traditional Italian sweets such as biscott and Polentina.

Today my purpose to visit here is behind the boutique counter.
The cafe space has ample seats, looking at the pastry kitchen through the glass wall, to taste these Italian sweets on site with Italian style cofee prepared by "barista".

Its special dessrt for summer is a set of three kinds of jelly, which I had.

                           
Left: Jelly of Spumante with berries
Right: Jelly of mango and passion fruites

Right: Jelly of espresso

What is common across three is the richness of taste.
They are not simply jelly of coffee flavor, sparkling wine, fruites but rather they are coffee  itself of loose solid form, pure of fruites or Spumante as well.
These glasses will promise the feeling of satisfaction.

Restaurant name: Sol Levante
Address: 3-10-14 Kita-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0061
Website: http://sollevante.jp

Museum café - SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART

Traditional taste from an old town in Western Japan is available at a museum café in central Tokyo. The café in SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART is operated by a traditional “fu”(麩, wheat gluten cakes) producer, Fumuroya, in Kaga (Kanazawa, the old town in West part of Japan.) The café is decorated accoding to its theme “Japanese modern”.

The café provides Japanese sweets, a few selections of lunch and some local specialities of Kaga region. Here we can discover different ways of serving fu. The traditioanal Japanese food is used for almost all sweets menu. That is not usual for us, people who are not familier with food in Kaga. I ever saw and had fu only as dumplings in clear soup. This is the first time for me to have fu in sweets.

 A few of crisp pieces are on top of ice cream.　Menu: "Fumuroya" parfait

 

 

Sugar coated and dried pieces are served with a cup of tea.

 

 

Only 30 lunch box are ready everyday.

The big soup boul with a lot of fu dipped is of course the feature of the set.

 

SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART does not always offer expositions related Japanese culture, although what we can find there is always high standard collections.

The cafe is accessible even without an entrance ticket of the museum.

It is recommendable not only for the museum visitor but also for  a short break during shopping in  Roppongi Midtown complexe, where the museum is also located.

Cafe address:  SUNTORY MUSEUM of ART Tokyo Midtown,  9-7-4 Akasaka,

                            Minato-ku, Tokyo

Website: http://www.suntory.co.jp/sma/

 

Japanese flavor ice cream from Haagen-Dazs

Summer is just around the corner in Tokyo.

To cool down, eating a cup of ice cream is an good idea here too.
The global ice cream maker, Haagen-Dazs produces Japanese flavor ones as well as standard taste such as Vanilla, Chocolate.

*KOKUTOU & KUROMITSU
Brown sugar and brown syrup.
What is intresting is that it is expressed as "brown" in English but is done as "black" in Japanese. "KOKU" and "KURO" both represents black color(黒）.
"Kokutou", the Japanese traditional edulcorant, has become more popular ingredient and has been paid more attentions for a few years, since it was found by health consious people that Kokutou contains minerals such as calcium and iron.
"Kuromitsu" has taste like honey or maple syrup, but it is made of sugar and water.
It is often used for making Japanese traditional sweets.

*GREEN TEA
Needless to say, green tea is one of the best-known Japanese traditional drink.
It is not only the big ice cream maker which offers green tea flavor.
Personally I could not distinguish ice cream flavor of green tea from one of pistachio...

It will be a nice experience to try Japanese flavor ice cream with Japanese traditional hot tea in Summer

Mame(豆）- Mamegen

Mame(豆）= beans.
Japanese not only cook beans as meals but also eat as salty snack or sweets for tea time.
Mamegen introduce you a lot of ways to have beans.

The traditional beans shop was established in 1865, Edo era. For over a century, its products have been attracting many people in central Tokyo.

Here are examples of beans products;
Salty snack - peanuts with shrimps flavor, broad beans with black pepper, peanuts cheese, soja with wasabi flavor, peanuts with sour plum
Sweet snack - peanuts or soja sugar frosted, almond with honey, peanuts with cocoa powder etc etc...

Photo 1: Cheese nuts(peanuts cheese)

Cheese is not Japanese traditional ingredient of course. But it is a good and modern combination.

Photo 2: Ume-lakka (peanuts with sour plum)

It looks like real "Umeboshi"(traditional sour plum pickles) but it is made of peanuts and coated with wheat sour plum flavor.

Photo 3: Hanamame (fried broad beans)

This is a traditional salty flavor and good match with beer.

Mamegen offers other Japanese traditional snacks and sweets.
All are packed in small size and sold at small price. Then they are good as a sourvenir or  small gift from Japan.

Shop name: Mamegen
Shop address: 1-8-12 Azabu-juban, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Website: http://www.mamegen.com

Torindo - Traditional Japanese sweets

During a stoll in Yanaka area, I found amazing sweets.
Torindo is a small sweets shop which is selling traditional Japanese sweets, using natural blessings. Obviously they are a kind of traditional Japanese sweets but are unique and witty, while kept as high quality products.

I got two of their specialities.

Kotaiyaki: Taiyaki(like me!) is very popular Japanese traditional casual sweets, fish-shape cake or sandwitch, filled with bean-paste. Torindo makes it smaller and converted it to more sphisticated product. "Ko" on top of Taiyaki means "small" in Japanese.

From left:
Japanese traditional sweets shops always wrap their products in elegant manner.
A piece of fresh green cedar leaf is the shop master's tender solicitude to remind us four seasons.
Like Taiyaki, Kotaiyaki is filled with bean-paste(anko).

        

                

Gochikoa: The name is original of the shop. As per the shop's introduction, the name inspired by five gods' wisdom. There are three box of Gochika, each different colors, yellow, red and green. Each box contains sugaring five kinds of dried fruits and vegetable. For example...

Above is Red box; orange, pear, lotus roots, fig and Japanese butterbur（fuki)

Other two boxes contain such as carrott, celery, eggplant, bamboo shoots...

I ever saw very similar one, dried and suguring fruits in Provence, south France. But pieces of vegetable processed in same way are the first experience here.
It is surely sweets and good match with a cup of green tea.

They are very good as souvenir of old Japanese, Yanaka.

The sweets shops has a small tea corner, where visitor can order green tea and their unique products on site.

Shop: Torindo
Address: 1-5-7 Ueno Sakuragi, Taito-ku, Tokyo
*Located in front of Tokyo University of the Arts
Website: http://www.torindo.co.jp

Karintou

Karintou is a traditional Japanese sweets.
The stick-like shape is made of flour and sugar glazed after fried.
The crisp texture and simple sweetness have attracted many people
from young children to elders for years.

It has some variety by ingredient dusted; brown suger, honey, sesami, peanuts...

A traditional Karintou house has more unique original flavour.
It made us surprised by introducing innovative version of Karintou,
transforming the traditional sweets to salty snack, which matchs with beer rather than with green tea.

For example, "Kimpira gobo"(left packet on picture), inspired by same name traditional spicy deli menu of burdock roots. The texture is surely Karintou but the flavour is really burdock with hot pepper. The other one is "Negi miso"(Japanese leek and miso paste).

                      

The traditional Karintou house opened a new branch inside of JR Tokyo station recently.
Known for the unique flavour of Karintou to many people, the small boutique becomes too much popular that its producing and selling capacity can not catch up with.
Long que is always there and the shop limits number of packets to be purchased per consumer so far.

Shop: Nihonbashi Nishikihorin
Website: http://www.nishikihorin.com/