Must-Eat Foods in Japan — Sweets Edition: Part 3 of 3

Date: 2018-08-05

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Themed Cafés: The Story Café Trend

Japan's café culture has moved increasingly toward what might be called "narrative cafés" — places where the entire experience (menu, décor, tableware, even the toilets) is built around a theme or story. The food has to be good; the atmosphere must be completely committed. Two examples.

Cat Macaron Parfait — Cafe Tint, Shimokitazawa (Tokyo)

Shimokitazawa is Tokyo's bohemian neighbourhood — vintage clothes, live music venues, independent cafés. Cafe Tint serves beautifully decorated plates built around animal themes: roses, cats, bears. We are cat people, so we ordered accordingly.

We ordered a cat omelette rather than the cat macaron parfait: a soft omelette shaped and decorated to resemble a cat's face, served with mushroom sauce. The taste was genuinely good — not just a visual gimmick. The café was full of young women photographing their food before eating. We joined them.

The cat-shaped milk jug on the table also deserves mention.

Fairy-Tale Parfait — Cafe Otogi, Sannomiya (Kobe)

Otogi means "fairy tale" in Japanese. This café draws on the imagery of Alice in Wonderland, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and other stories — in the menu names, the crockery, the cutlery, the wall decorations, and the handwashing basin in the toilets.

We ordered the Snow White Poison Apple Parfait. The food was beautiful and tasted excellent. The interior was immersive rather than superficial — real nest boxes, real flowers, real bird cages built into the painted woodland walls of our section. Girls who love beautiful, carefully designed things should put this on their list.

Karafuneya Coffee, Sanjo Honten (Kyoto)

150 types of parfait. At all times. Including parfaits served with tonkatsu, prawn fritters, and karaage chicken — for when the sweetness becomes overwhelming and something savoury is needed mid-way through.

The coffee: Dutch-style cold-brew iced coffee, served in a copper mug. Drunk between parfait bites without added syrup, it cuts through the sweetness perfectly.

I ordered the Wa-fū Special Parfait (Japanese-style): three scoops of black sesame ice cream, kuromitsu (brown sugar syrup) ice cream, and vanilla, layered with shiratama mochi, sweet red bean, candied chestnuts, and — unmistakably — a red cocktail cherry on top. The kuromitsu ice cream was unusual and excellent. The apple garnish was cut into leaf shapes — a detail from traditional Japanese presentation that I had not seen in years.

The Scale

For groups: a bucket parfait for 5 people (¥8,500). For larger groups: a version serving 10 (¥18,000) with a whole melon on top. And the largest: 25 servings for ¥50,000 — possibly the largest commercially available parfait in the world.

Karafuneya is the parfait destination. A visit leaves a lasting memory.

Bonus: JTRRD Cafe (Osaka)

Not a parfait, but worth including. JTRRD Cafe in Osaka serves smoothies described as the most visually beautiful in the world — and the appearance genuinely earns the claim. We ordered green and pink. The colour, layering, and clarity of the glass were remarkable.

More importantly: they tasted excellent. Chia seeds at the base add texture and substance. A green smoothie this good and this beautiful would make every morning better.

The owner has since opened a second café nearby serving salads that look like layer cakes. On the next Osaka trip, both are on the list.

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