Gogyo

I remember my first meal at Gogyo very well – it was first time I really fell in love with ramen. Here wasn’t just an oily or fatty broth, here was broth with some serious flavour. Years later, it was just as good as I remembered. After exploring the Nishiki Market, we lined up to be the first in for dinner at Gogyo. The service is quite excellent – the staff are attentive to your every need and are really professional. Dining on a weekend, we received a starter for ¥300 and had a choice between ‘radish’ or ‘chicken’. I picked radish and enjoyed the warmed little dish with its mysterious sauce (whatever it was, was delicious). Next up was a plate of fresh cucumber with a spicy sesame seasoning – a nice contrast between the heat of the seasoning and the cool cucumber. Then the main game – the burnt soy ramen. Yep, bring on the black broth and its rich, salty flavour. The ramen themselves have plenty of bite and the pork was lovely and tender. I adore soft-boiled ramen eggs and this was one of the best. All the ingredients combined to make a really special ramen unlike any other I’ve ever eaten.

Gogyo, 452 Jumonjicho Takoyakushi Sagaru, Yanaginobamba-dori, Kyoto Japan http://www.ramendining-gogyo.com

Kagetsudo

I was lucky enough to be in Tokyo for Sanja-matsuri, one of the city’s largest festivals, held in Asakusa. Unfortunately, this meant that many of the district’s traditional stores had queues out onto the street for blocks to pick up their specialties. Kagetsudo’s specialty is melon-pan (melon bread), which they make in jumbo-size, but as the queue was a bit silly, we decided just to try their soft serve icecream. There are about thirty odd flavours to choose from, including only-in-Japan flavours like matcha and red bean paste. I picked sakura, which also falls into that category, and was surprised at how large the portion was. It was piled up in a perfect soft serve spiral and we hung around near the store to enjoy it. The icecream was really creamy and, as expected, had a beautiful floral flavour. The sakura tasted so familiar, and we decided that it was a bit like rose, but not quite. There were also little crispy bits inside the serve, which we decided was crystalised petals, but we couldn’t be sure. I’d love to come back to try both the melon-pan and more of the soft serve flavours.

Kagetsudo, 1-18-11 Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo                             http://www.asakusa-kagetsudo.com

Ladurée

On my last day in Tokyo I spotted something I hadn’t seen before – a Ladurée icecream store! It’s part of the store in the Lumine 2 complex, just outside Shinjuku station (on the JR side), and I couldn’t help myself. I ordered the icecream interpretation of the Ispahan cake I’d had at their Ginza store, which I’d fallen in love with. The icecream itself was a creamy soft-serve and had a delicate rose flavour. The portion was huge but what made it completely delicious and decadent was the array of toppings. There was a raspberry sauce, rose crystals, fresh lychee slices and raspberries, and a raspberry macaron shell crumbled over the top. Yep, not even kidding. I’m not generally a huge fan of rose as a flavour, but the icecream was so soft and the flavour went so well with the toppings that I polished the whole lot off. The macaron crumble added a good bit of texture and of course the fresh raspberries were perfection. I also grabbed a Marie Antoinette macaron from the store, which was flavoured with their tea of the same name – it was everything you would expect from this sweets stalwart.

Ladurée, Shinjuku Lumine 2, 1F, 3-38-2 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo   http://www.laduree.jp/

Tide Pool Cafe

I revisited many of my old haunts on this trip to Tokyo, and one of the most lovely was the Tide Pool Cafe in Kichijoji. It’s a bit out of the way on the path leading to the park, but I have fond memories of sitting there with a glass full of icecream doing my translation homework. This visit was a great reminder of why I loved this place so much – it was another warm day and we stopped in for icecream and to get out of the sun for a bit. The ladies explained the three icecream flavours and we picked two to try – vanilla and cafe au lait. They were both beautifully presented in glass teacups, with fresh strawberries on the vanilla and a huge dollop of whipped cream on top of both serves. The vanilla was surely made from buttermilk – the flavour was so rich, creamy and genuinely vanilla, not essence or imitation. Similarly, the cafe au lait had a gentler coffee flavour, as would be expected, but was incredibly refreshing and not sickly sweet. The ladies kindly lent us fans to cool down and were very welcoming of hot and bothered tourists, just as they were of an intrepid student all those years ago.

Tide Pool Cafe, F&W Building, Musashino, Kichijoji, Tokyo Japan, no website

Cafe Comme Ca

Food blogging is a tough business – sometimes you have to make great sacrifices for the sake of a good post. After exploring Loft, one of my favourite stores in Shibuya, I spotted a Cafe Comme Ca and had to stop in to try their special promotional tart – yep, true sacrifice, especially because the tart was shaped like the adorable cartoon character Rascal the Raccoon (oh no, if I HAVE to). For 1000 yen I got a slice of this decadent…slice, a cup of black tea and a commemorative coaster. The tart had a milk chocolate paw and tail (could it be any cuter?!), and was jam-packed with cream. The tart base was dark chocolate flavoured and there was a sinfully rich dark chocolate ganache layered inside. The ribbons of mango woven throughout to cut through the rich creaminess of the rest of the slice were a highlight, but there was also a lightly-flavoured coffee cream in between the ribbons which complemented the mango nicely. The whole dish was very, very sweet though, so maybe not the best pre-lunch snack, but definitely the tastiest slice I’ve munched on for the sake of this blog!

Cafe Comme Ca Shibuya, within Loft, 21-1 Udagawa-cho, Shibuya, Tokyo Japan   http://www.cafe-commeca.co.jp/ (Japanese only)

Brooklyn Parlour

Dessert before dinner is one of those beautiful things that being an adult makes possible, and I’m convinced it’s even more legit when you’re on holidays. So I stopped by Brooklyn Parlour for dessert. Before dinner. Yep. I was given the choice of a solo or share table when I arrived, and I picked the share table – it was in the middle of the basement space and gave a great people-watching view amid the floral arrangements and bookshelves. I started out with a pot of peach and apricot tea, which was bright pink when I poured it and lightly aromatic to taste. For dessert I chose the red berry, pistachio and chocolate mousse glace (icecream). The berry coulis around the icecream was full of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and cranberries, and added a nice tartness to contrast the sweetness of the chocolate. The mousse-icecream was mostly frozen but soft enough to eat and silky smooth, with a rich but not-too-rich milk chocolate flavour. The real delight was the layers of frozen raspberry and pistachio inside the icecream – aka heaven. One of the best desserts I’ve had in a long time, and in one of the coolest venues.

Brooklyn Parlour, OIOI Anex B1F, 3-1-26 Shinjuku, Tokyo Japan           http://www.brooklynparlor.co.jp/shinjuku/

Ice de Lion

On our way back from Kyoto we were a bit early for our shinkansen, and given how warm the day was, the best solution was clearly to hole up at the nearest icecream store. Luckily, the nearest icecream store happened to be the adorable Mister Donuts icecream brand, Ice de Lion, with a supercute lion mascot. Obviously, I had to order my icecream in the lion wafer sandwich, which has an impression of the lion mascot’s face on top. I picked the ‘passion’ sorbet flavour, which was a blend of mango and raspberry sorbets. The serving was a huge sphere of sorbet and it actually stayed together quite well, considering how slowly I ate it. Both fruit flavours were really true and I’m very glad someone thought of swirling them together, because they went perfectly – the sweetness of the mango really complemented the tartness of the raspberry. We even got to enjoy a live band performance of music from Disney songs coming from the next floor up while we enjoyed our icecream and people-watched.  Oh, and the Ice de Lion lady even gave me a sheet full of cute lion stickers, like the big kid I am when it comes to icecream.

Ice de Lion, Kyoto station (JR), Kyoto  Japan                            https://www.misterdonut.jp/icedelion/