A secret soft serve with legendary status.

When you visit a fast food chain, it’s sort of expected that the menu will be the same across the country, or at least within the prefecture, state or county where it’s located.

That’s the way we thought things worked in Japan, until our reporter Seiji Nakazawa stumbled upon a menu item at a McDonald’s branch that he hadn’t seen anywhere else: The Soft Twist Tower Size.

The signboard above alerted Seiji to the dessert when he was browsing the meal options around the food court at Ito-Yokado in the Stella Town shopping mall in Omiya, in Tokyo’s neighbouring Saitama Prefecture.

As the name suggests, what makes this particular soft serve so special is its serving size. Whereas regular soft serves are priced at around 140 yen (US$0.89), this upsized version towers over them all, and is priced at 240 yen.

With so much soft serve in the cone, this is more like a leaning tower of ice cream, and when Seiji ran a search for it online, he discovered it’s still a secret menu item, with people speaking of its legendary greatness in hushed whispers, with many still yet to encounter it.

According to the whispers, the Soft Twist Tower made its debut at this McDonald’s branch on 15 July, and as of this writing, it’s one of only a few stores where it’s sold.

▼ While the regular soft serve has three layers, this one has six, giving you twice as much ice cream for less than twice the price.

Seiji loves his soft serve, so he felt a rush of excitement as he locked lips on the elusive tower. Thankfully, the base had been firmly placed into the cone so the solid foundation helped to prevent the tower from collapsing.

The height made it fun to eat, but best of all, it tasted delicious. It had the same mellow sweetness as a regular McDonald’s soft serve, but it tasted better than ever, and before he knew it, he’d finished all six layers of the dessert, like some sort of dessert-hunting video game hero.

Phantom sweets like this definitely taste better with the legendary status that surrounds them, so keep an eye out for the Soft Twist Tower next time you visit McDonald’s in Japan. Alternatively, you can search for the sweet by copying and pasting its Japanese name, “ソフトツイストタワーサイズ” into Twitter, so you can find out where the secret participating branches are located. Happy soft serve hunting, everyone!

Location information

McDonald’s Omiya Miyahara Ito-Yokado store / マクドナルド大宮宮原イトーヨーカドー店
Address: Saitama-ken, Saitama-shi, Kita-ku, Miyahara-cho 1-854-1
埼玉県さいたま市北区宮原町1－854－1
Open: 10:00 a.m.-8:30 p.m.

Photos © SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]