Tirol Chocolate Flavour #10: Sakura Mochi

10. Sakura Mochi (2020)

Sakura (cherry blossom) mochi is a Japanese sweet that is enjoyed every spring. It is usually a ball of cherry blossom flavoured mochi rice with red bean paste inside, then wrapped with a sakura leaf.

Tirol chocolate has made their version of sakura mochi! Just in time as the sakura are now in full bloom this year.

Flavours: sakura, white chocolate, sweet red bean paste

Here the filling is a firm jelly giving this sweet the soft and sticky texture and flavour that mochi rice has. Then there is a thin layer of red bean paste. Although the amount is small, it’s all that is needed to impart a good balance of sweetness. The outer pink chocolate layer is the sweetest and perhaps is the part that is has the most sakura fragrance.

Mos Burger

When I first came to Japan, I heard that Mos Burger had the best burgers from a chain fast food store in Japan. I've had their burgers many times as I think this statement is true. There are only a few burger chains in Japan, but I feel like Mos is the only one that originated in Japan. They use 100% beef, and what makes this burger different from the American chains is that the bread has a slight sweetness to it, typical of Japanese bread. The vegetables are always fresh, and there is a good balance of meat, veggies and sauce.
The Japanese like their patties to be very juicy which is why you'll find that most burgers are served with a paper pocket to eat out of so it doesn't drip everywhere. Mos' burgers are no exception and explode with juiciness. I always get the Mos Yasai (vegetable) burger because it is packed with lettuce and tomato. Make no mistake though, the patty is still beef, it's NOT a vegetarian burger.

Mos vegetable burger

Area: various places throughout Japan

Restaurant: Mos Burger

Website: https://www.mos.jp/

Hours: depends on the location of the store

Cafe Tera: A Cafe and Kissaten Meld

Cafe Tera is a rather new, quaint little restaurant in the middle of a residential area that serves up kissaten (Japanese coffee house) style food in a bright cafe setting. It's clean, not too crowded, and the food is tasteful so I have been back several times.

Cafe Tera

First let's talk about lunch. The weekday lunch menu consists of standard kissaten fare such as tonkatsu (panko fried pork cutlet), hamburger patty, shoga-yaki (ginger pork saute) and kara-age (fried chicken). I ordered the teriyaki chicken lunch. It came with a salad, Japanese pickles, miso soup and a scoop of potato salad. The chicken was very tender and juicy with a teriyaki sauce not too sweet nor too salty. The sauciness was great to eat with the bed of cabbage it lay on and with the steaming white rice. The pickled gobo (burdock root) was soft, but did not lose its characteristic texture, and the sweetness was perfect to eat with rice. The salad had a nice mix of vegetables; okra, carrot, nagaimo (a type of potato), fresh peas, mizuna (a salad green), and was topped with a creamy french dressing. The miso soup contained abura age (fried tofu), wakame, koya doufu (dried tofu), green onion, and was pretty standard in flavour. The potato salad was the chunky type and was season simply, but nicely with salt and pepper.

Weekday lunch menu

Teriyaki chicken lunch

At any time during the day one can order from a variety of sandwiches. If ordered in the lunch hours (11:30am-1:30pm), drinks are discounted 200 yen. I went with the egg sandwich; a thick, 3-egg tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette) with a layer of cucumber mayonnaise salad, sandwiched between thin white bread. The tamagoyaki was made well, with a softness and lightness to it. The accent of mustard and black pepper in the sandwich was nice, and the ketchup added a bit of sweetness. The bread was slightly sweet and was probably made with margarine, making a great match with the lightly seasoned egg. I think I would have preferred a slightly denser or thicker bread to stand up to the thick tamagoyaki though.

Drink and food menu

Egg sandwich

"Morning service" is part of Nagoya culture and this cafe is not missing it. It's basically a free breakfast when you order a drink. Here, the basic Morning includes toast, a hard-boiled egg, and yogurt. There are also options with different toasts such as red bean paste, egg salad, or cinnamon. They all use half slices of white bread, but they are thick enough that it is a satisfying breakfast.

Egg salad toast with yogurt

Toast with hard-boiled egg and yogurt

Red bean paste toast with hard-boiled egg

Cinnamon toast and yogurt

For a slightly extra fee, there is also the bread salad available during morning hours.

Bread salad

At one visit, I had the fruit herb tea. It was actually quite nice with a good blend of apple, mango, hibiscus, rosehip to name a few. 

There is always an explanation about the featured coffee of the day (where it's from and it's flavour profile).

On weekends and holidays, the lunchtime menu changes to pasta options. One unique thing about this cafe is that it has seating outside on turf if you wish to bring along a furry friend.

Interior

Area: about 100m from Honjin Station (Higashiyama Line) 本陣駅（東山線）
Restaurant: Cafe Tera カフェテラ
Map: https://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230113/23068560/dtlmap/
Hours: 7am-6pm, closed Wednesdays

Yogurt Flavours in Japan

Japan has many unique flavours of snack items such as potato chips, popcorn and ice cream, but it doesn't stop there. I am a yogurt lover and sometimes I come across new or seasonal flavours that I just have to try. For example, recently I tried sakura momo flavour which is cherry blossom peach, by the Danone makers. When spring comes along you'll see sakura flavoured items everywhere. It's a mild taste but somehow it's an addictive one, especially when it's seen only in this season. It's difficult to explain how sakura tastes but I wouldn't say it's floral. This is because often times the sakura leaves are used for flavour.

Sakura and peach yogurt

Upon opening the yogurt I got the immediate aroma of sakura which is what I often find of sakura products, the aroma is pretty strong. I was expecting the peach flavour to overpower the sakura, but actually there is a good balance. It looks like they use ground up sakura leaves here to flavour the yogurt, and only peach juice to achieve this balance. I think that if they used chunks of peach it would be too much peach flavour so it seems they have thought it out well. Overall a yogurt I would wait for spring to purchase again!

Pieces of sakura leaves in the yogurt

Here are some other interesting ones;

Early Grey Tea

Cocoa and Berry

Kissa Tsudzuki: A Quaint Cafe With Quite a Reputation

This cafe gained quite a big reputation in the past years as serving the world’s tallest latte. The owner of the shop would stand on top of a step ladder and pour milk and coffee simultaneously into a cup on the table. The popularity made this a go-to cafe in this rather retro area of this city. I’m not sure they still do the “tall” latte but they are now known for serving a tasty ‘morning’, elaborate fruit parfaits and their hot pressed sandwiches (namely the one filled with beef stew).

"Morning" Menu

Lunch Menu

Drink Menu

On the day I visited I was hoping to get a bite of the beef stew sandwich but unfortunately they were all sold out (I was afraid of this since when it appeared on a tv program they said it was limited in quantity).  I went for the half lunch and ordered the egg salad hot pressed sandwich. When I say half lunch  (¥550) it still comes with one full sandwich! The full lunch actually comes with 2 different flavours of sandwiches. The half lunch still comes with a drink and mini dessert.

Half hot pressed sandwich lunch

The egg salad was mildy but perfectly seasoned. I think they used salted butter on the outside of the bread so that itself added some flavour. It tasted like only a minimal amount of mayonnaise was used in the egg salad which was great to enhance the natural flavour of the egg. The edges of the bread were crisp (no crusts) from the magic of the butter and sandwich maker. I’m surprised by the amount of egg salad they fit in there without the sandwich getting soggy or breaking apart!

Of the drinks that come with the set are milk, melon soda, coffee or tea. But you can order any of the drinks and pay the difference from ¥400. So I ordered the fresh banana juice. It was simple, using fresh banana in milk and was very refreshing as well as filling.

I didn’t quite like the dessert though, it tasted like watered down McDonald’s drink (the ones that you can rent the huge tub of it for events...do they still even do that?🤷‍♀️).

Cafe Tsudzuki is spacious and bright, a great place to go for a hearty breakfast or lunch.

Area: about 8 min walk west of Nakamura Kuyakusho station (Sakuradori Line), 中村区役所駅（桜通線）

Restaurant: Kissa Tsudzuki 喫茶ツヅキ

Map: https://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230101/23016117/dtlmap/

Hours: 7:30am-7pm (Breakfast 7:30-11am, Lunch 11am-2pm)

Gandhaara: Stands Out From Other Indian Restaurants

There are a lot of Indian curry restaurants around Japan, and many of them are quite similar. In the Nagoya area, a small one that is located in a residential area has gained a good reputation, not only among the Japanese, but also foreigners. It is considered more authentic than those restaurants that try to appeal to the Japanese palate.

I stopped by for a small dinner one night. Because I wanted a lamb curry, I skipped the dinner set meals and ordered a la carte from the menu. The spinach and mutton curry was seasoned perfectly and went great with the roti (flatbread using whole wheat flour). I tried my partner's butter chicken and fish curry (part of the dinner set) but I found they were seasoned much lighter compared to the spinach curries, making them seem a bit lacking in flavour in comparison. I'm sure they would be delicious if ordered alone.

Spinach and mutton curry with roti

Area: 5-min. walk east of Honjin Station (Higashiyama Line) 本陣駅（東山線）
Restaurant: Gandhaara ガンダーラ
Map: https://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230101/23008998/dtlmap/
Hours: Weekday Lunch 11am-3pm (LO 2:30pm),  Weekday Dinner 5-11pm (LO 10:30pm), Weekends and Holidays 11am-10pm (LO 9:30pm), closed 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month unless it falls on a holiday

Baschee Cheesecake, a Lawson Hit

The Lawson group of convenience stores came out with the Baschee and it flew off the shelves, especially when television shows started featuring it as a new style of cheesecake to Japan. The name is a shortened form of Basque Cheesecake, a hard type cheesecake (similar to a New York Cheesecake), that is cooked at such a high temperature that the top layer becomes burnt. It almost has a burnt caramel flavour with a bitterness that goes well with the sweetness of the cheese.