Tirol Chocolate Flavour #15: Strawberry and Milk

15. Strawberry & Milk (2019)

You can't go wrong with Ichigo Miruku, or strawberry and milk! This is one of the flavours of Tirol that can be found all year round, and joined the regular line up in 2019.

Flavours: strawberry, jam, milk

This chocolate is exactly as it sounds; the pink and white outer chocolate layer tastes like a strawberry milk drink. The inner jelly filling has the texture of a firm gummy candy, but tastes like strawberry jam.

Cafe Grace: A Simple Morning Service As a Satisfying Breakfast

Here's another little kissaten, or Japanese cafe, in the middle of a residential zone. This one might be a little easier to come across since it is near a main road and across from a post office.

Today I came for the “morning service”. This is when you order a drink, and a small breakfast comes included in the price of that drink.

Banana juice and "morning"

Since banana juice is still so popular and I’m still liking it, I ordered that as my beverage of choice. Here they use real banana blended with milk. The drink came refreshingly cold but smooth with no chunks of ice. It was very sweet. I suppose they used really ripe bananas because it didn’t feel like added sugar to me. The yogurt was plain with no added sweetener, and on the thicker side of Japanese yogurts which is what I like (often cafe’s serve a sweetened yogurt). Here the only sweetener was a dollop of strawberry jam. The white bread toast is great on its own. Milky and with a light buttering bringing out the perfectly toasted flavour, almost like a shortbread cookie. It wasn't sweet like many Japanese bread can be. I also like the denseness of the bread, being not too light and fluffy. This bread went nicely with the ogura (red bean paste), which looked and tasted homemade to me, chunky and less sweet compared to store-bought.

Homemade cookies and cake options to go with your coffee or tea

There are a also a variety of homemade pastries that I would like to try next time. These are to be eaten in the cafe, not for take away.

There was no music playing, but a big screen tv showed the news for all the customers to watch. Most of the patrons seemed to come solo in the morning with coffee tickets, a sign of being a regular (usually 11 coffee tickets for the price of 10 coffees). There is no smoking allowed in this kissaten.

Interior

Area: about an 8-minute walk southwest of Kamejima Station (Higashiyama Line) 亀島駅（東山線）

Shop: Cafe Grace カフェグレース

Map and Info: https://retty.me/area/PRE23/ARE61/SUB6102/100001424081/map/

Tirol Chocolate Flavour #14: Premium Strawberry

#14. Premium Strawberry (2019)

A lot of snacks and food in Japan use the word premium to try to make the product stick out. Here Tirol wanted to show that this is not just a regular strawberry chocolate, but one that really brings out the flavour of the tart little berry.

Flavours; strawberry, white chocolate, alcohol

This chocolate is not overly sweet. The outer strawberry layer is white chocolate based, with bits of dried strawberry on the underside. Inside, I could taste and feel the heavy cream and the tartness of the jam. I also got a slight hint of alcohol in it making this a good treat for adults to enjoy. Just like the picture on the wrapping shows, overall it was like eating a scoop of strawberry ice cream packed with extra strawberries.

What Food Delivery Looks Like in Japan

When visiting Japan, since there are so many restaurant options, and places to get take out, you may never have had the experience of ordering for delivery. Although some places do deliver the standard North American way, many places do it slightly differently.

Here's an example of a delivered meal in Japan (pot and rice scoop included):

The North American way is to deliver the food in styrofoam, plastic or aluminum containers that are disposable. In Japan, they may use glass dishes, bento boxes, thermos pots and plastic chopsticks, things that are meant to be reused and not thrown away. You may be wondering how this works.

You do not have to wash them yourself as that would defeat the purpose of the convenience of delivery food. You just stuff the dishes in the plastic bag provided and put it outside your door. A delivery person will come and pick up the dirty dishes sometime during the next day!

The meal in the pictures is from a delivery food service called Kamatora 釜寅. The dish I ordered was 「釜寅」五目 (1390 yen, plus tax), it's basically flavoured rice and toppings cooked in a kama, a special pot that cooks over a flame).
Restaurant's Website: https://www.kamatora.jp/

Tirol Chocolate Flavour #13: Chocolate Mint Mochi

13. Chocolate Mint Mochi (2020)

This is one flavour that seemed really interesting as mochi is not usually something you associate with mint chocolate!

Flavours: mint, chocolate, white chocolate, sweet rice

The light green outer layer is where the mint is. It's sweet like white chocolate but the mint flavour is enough to make it a refreshing rather than too sweet. There is a layer of chocolate syrup, then a mochi-like jelly underneath that giving a nice chewy texture. On the very bottom is a milk chocolate base layer. The whole experience is just like eating mint chocolate ice cream with some chewy mochi. Since mochi imparts mostly texture as opposed to flavour, it actually works here!

Kunihisa: For Gourmet Tempura

Tempura can be quite an extravagant affair in Japan. Many restaurants specializing in tempura are high-end, so it's not often I go. For special occasions though it is a nice change from the regular fare. Most restaurants such as this have counter seating so that the chef can fry the tempura and place it in front of you, one by one, explaining what is concealed underneath the batter. Because of this, the whole meal may take a couple hours which is why it's nice when you want to prolong the evening and spend time with someone special, or impress a client.

Because tempura is essentially just an ingredient that is battered and fried, at a place like this, the ingredients must be carefully selected. At this restaurant, they definitely were, and the chef was sure to use rare ones and interesting combinations.

The first two dishes, or appetizers, looked like this;

And now the mains, the first tempura was kuruma ebi, a type of shrimp that is considered a delicacy. It is very plump and sweet. The first thing I noticed was that the tempura here had a considerable sesame oil flavour.

Shrimp tempura

Usually gobo (burdock root) is much skinnier than this. It was a specially selected variety that had a good texture and sweetness perfect for tempura.

Burdock root tempura

Next was a type of whole onion. It was so soft and sweet, and just melted in my mouth.

Onion tempura

The palate cleansers, tsukemono (Japanese pickles), and raw namako (sea cucumber). I'm not sure what the orange coloured slices were but it was almost like cheese. The namako was very fresh and had a wonderful crunchiness to it.

Sea cucumber

I love spring rolls so there was no going wrong with this dish. It was filled with tara shirako (testicles of cod fish), which was so fresh with no fishy flavours, and was cooked perfectly, retaining the characteristic creaminess of it (cooked too much it will become hard),

Shirako spring roll

This was a first for me, Bora no heso, literally meaning belly button of the bora fish, but it is not actually the belly button. It is called that because it has the crunchy texture that chicken sunagimo (gizzard) has.

Bora no heso

There's still more:

Mochi and mentaiko wrapped in seaweed

Shirako, again creamy

Fish tempura

To end the meal was a half-cooked egg tempura on rice, a take on tamago kake gohan (raw egg on rice) and miso soup. By this time I was so full, so the egg tempura seemed a bit too oily and heavy for me, but I'm sure it would have been more tasty had I not been so stuffed! 

Egg tempura and miso soup

Normally, I usually associate tempura with dipping it in a tentsuyu, or sweet and savory soy sauce and dashi based sauce but here the chef mostly recommended using just course salt (even though tentsuyu was provided). I suppose he wanted the ingredients to be able to stand alone without much added to it, and many of the dishes did do just that. 

I believe the only menu available is the chef's omakase or chef's choice course meal (8000 yen). The ingredients he uses change daily depending on the season and freshness. It is a small restaurant with a nice atmosphere great for couples celebrating a special anniversary or for catching up with an old friend.

Area: about 260m south of Kamejima Station (Higashiyama Line) 亀島駅（東山線）
Restaurant: Tempura Kunihisa 天婦羅・國久
Map and Info: https://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230113/23058220/
Hours: 5:30-11pm (LO 10:30pm), closed Wednesdays