Riding the waves and eating the sweets in Asagaya.
It’s been said that you can learn everything you really need to know in life in kindergarten, but that’s obviously oversimplifying things quite a bit. Adult life presents problems far more complex than the topics handled in a curriculum designed for five-year-olds. For example, from a young age pretty much everyone gets taught not to play with their food…but what do you do when the people who’re giving you that food not only encourage you to play with it, but outright challenge you to?
That’s the philosophical question represented by dessert cafe Tokyo Taiyaki Mania. There’s a lot of accuracy in that name, as the shop is indeed located in Tokyo (in the Asagaya neighborhood, to be precise), and the staff is passionate about taiyaki, the traditional Japanese desserts of fish-shaped cakes filled with anko (sweet bean paste) or other sweet stuff.
And yet, Tokyo Taiyaki Mania’s name isn’t completely thorough. It leaves out roughly half of the menu options: the gelato that Tayaki Mania (as we’ll call the place for short) produces in-house, using an ice cream-making machine imported from Italy.
This brings us to another temptation to go against something we were taught as kids: Don’t spoil your appetite by eating too many sweets. As adults, though, we’ve learned that eating double desserts isn’t “spoiling your appetite” so much as “using your appetite’s full potential in the most joy-inducing way possible,” and thankfully Taiyaki Mania agrees and recommends treating yourself to both a taiyaki and some ice cream at the same time.
In turn, this, leads to the natural compulsion to combine the treats, and once again, Taiyaki Mania isn’t about to try to talk you out of that. As a matter of fact, the cafe’s website invites customers to take the “naminori (wave-riding) challenge” by balancing their taiyaki atop their swirl of gelato and snapping a photo of the surfing-style sweets.
This was a challenge our taste-testing Japanese-language reporter Yayoi Saginomiya was happy to accept, especially since she’d opted for the photogenic and appropriately colored Blue Ocean flavor of ice cream.
That said, balancing the taiyaki is easier said than done. The gelato isn’t watery, but it’s still a creamy dessert, so it’ll start to melt if you wait too long. For best results Yayoi recommends standing the taiyaki more or less upright at the top of the swirl, evenly distributing its weight over the densest concentration of ice cream.
▼ Success!
OK, so the wave-riding taiyaki combo looks great, but how does it taste? Yayoi says she was very impressed. In terms of ingredients. Taiyaki Mania does things differently than conventional sweets shops, using no wheat flour in their batter. Instead, the cake is made from a mixture of rice flour and tofu, and the anko inside contains beet sugar instead of refined white sugar. Similarly, their gelato is gluten-free and entirely non-dairy.
Whether Taiyaki Mania’s ingredient philosophy is attractively health-conscious or a form of sweets sacrilege is a matter of personal perspective, but Yayoi found the results quite tasty, producing a light and straightforward sweetness with a clean finish. The flavor of the Blue Hawaii ice cream, like many blue desserts in Japan, is what’s called “soda” in Japanese, referring not to cola but to a light apple citrus cider, and it also has a pinch of salt to give it an extra maritime-evocative element.
Taiyaki Mania’s prices are on the premium side, with our mini taiyaki costing us 378 yen (US$2.40) and our gelato 918 yen. As an added bonus, though, Taiyaki Mania is also a little more stylish than the typical taiyaki stand, and it’s located along a covered shopping street that’s fun to stroll along and get a peek at daily Tokyoite life.
And don’t worry, neither they, nor we, will tattle to your mom about you playing with your food.
Cafe information
Tokyo Taiyaki Mania
Address: Tokyo-to, Suginami-ku, Asagaya Minami 1-36-18
Open 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Website
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]
