Japan Food Review: Japanese Desserts in Ueno

As if we didn’t have a big enough meal (see: Yakitori @ Torizou in Ueno), Hideyuki took us for a round of Japanese desserts.

Not immediately after, of course, because well, we really ate a lot! We walked around Ueno for an hour or so, observing the neighbourhood. It was freezing and we decided we needed something warm. We sat ourselves down into a little, warm dessert shop and was promptly served little cups of Japanese green tea. It was wonderfully warm. We were then joined by Hide’s girlfriend who flipped through the menu and proclaimed that she didn’t want anything because she had already been out and eaten a heap with her friends (we did too, but it didn’t stop us!)

(Oh the anticipation! Dessert with chopsticks!)

Eager to try something hot and traditional, I ordered the o-shiruko, which is a traditional azuki bean soup with grilled mochi. The soup came with, well, something on the side. It was sort of funny herby type condiment which Hide told me to eat with the soup. I didn’t much like it at all.

Suffice to say, it was very sweet! The grilled mochi was interestingly nice and chewy (rather different from ones you get outside Japan). The boys, however, opted for a more modern interpretation of the Japanese dessert.

Josh went for the strawberry soft serve sundae which had the ever popular vanilla soft serve ice cream (the Japanese love their softserve. It was everywhere. And it was like $5 for a soft serve cone! Brrr!) with lots of strawberries, azuki bean paste, some sort of jelly and a little mandarin segment.

Hide went for the macha (green tea) version, which wasn’t as pretty but very good.

I have no idea how they still wanted to eat ice cream after all that cold!