Tokyo’s all-you-can-eat ice cream cafe is a sweet deal, both literally and figuratively

Oh, and all-you-can-eat cake is also part of the package.

We recently visited an all-you-can-eat cookie cafe in Tokyo. Awesome as it is, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to stress that it’s really not the sort of place you should go to every day. Not for any health reasons, but because then you’d be too stuffed to take full advantage of Tokyo’s all-you-can-eat ice cream restaurant.

Actually, you can find branches of this restaurant, called Sweets Paradise, scattered across Japan. The chain has several locations in Tokyo, and we decided to stop by the one across the street from Shinjuku Station, since it’s the closest to RocketNews24 headquarters.

▼ What’s the point in getting up and going to work if you can’t reward yourself with a mountain of ice cream when your shift is done?

If you’ve inexplicably wandered into a place named “Sweets Paradise” in search of a balanced meal, you’ll be happy to know that the restaurant also has an assortment of pizzas, pastas, and salads, laid out buffet-style.

▼ Don’t panic, Sweets Paradise doesn’t serve something called “toilet pasta.” Those are actually separate signs directing customers to the restrooms and noodles, respectively.

The bigger draw, though, is the array of all-you-can-eat desserts that are also part of the standard, 1,530-yen (US$15) package, which also gets you unlimited soft drinks.

However, an extra 200 yen gets you access to what’s, in our opinion, the real star of the spread: all-you-can-eat premium ice cream.

Sweets Paradise isn’t about to hoodwink anyone with bland, low-quality generic brands. On our visit, there were three flavors of Haagen-Dazs in the lineup, with green tea, blueberry, and vanilla all waiting for us in the freezer case.

The remaining seven varieties were part of Korean/Japanese confectioner Lotte’s Il Gelato line. While not as internationally famous as Haagen-Dazs, Il Gelato is officially certified by Italy’s Siga, also known as the Italian Gelato Association. Even without those credentials, the baker’s half-dozen of Il Gelato flavors on offer (Hokkaido melon, Hokkaido fruit mix, rum raisin, strawberry, mango, Hokkaido milk coffee, and ramune) were all delicious enough to make us true believers in the brand.

Ordinarily, we’d be tempted to say that 10 mouth-watering types of ice cream constitute too much of a good thing, since all that variety makes choosing just one or two way too difficult. Thankfully, this all-you-can-eat deal means that “all of the above” is a viable option, and for turning our dessert dilemma into a dream-come-true, we’d say that Sweets Paradise has earned the right to call itself just that.

Restaurant information
Sweets Paradise (Shinjuku Higashiguchi branch) /スイーツパラダイス（新宿東口店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Shinjuku 3-26-6, Shinjuku FF Building basement level 1
東京都新宿区新宿3-26-6　新宿ＦＦビルＢ１Ｆ
Open: 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Website

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