Yokohama: Hayashiya Chaen (林屋茶園)

I was in Japan for a weekend fangirl getaway in the beginning of January. My trip was super short that I didn't get a chance to leave Yokohama and Shin-Yokohama, which is not bad at all since Yokohama is already kinda like "one stop service" for everything that Tokyo has.


Because my time was so limited, I planned my food schedule like crazy. So as soon as I arrived Yokohama and sorted out my luggage, I went for dessert at Hayashiya Chaen (林屋茶園) which is a branch of Kyo Hayashiya (京はやしや), famous Japanese green tea dessert shop from Kyoto, at Sogo Yokohama.

I ordered Hojicha parfait set which comes with a drink of your choice (I chose yuzu tea). Hojicha parfait seems to be one of the most famous menu at this shop. Hojicha is a type of green tea that has been roasted so the colour is more like brown-redish. The taste is lighter than normal matcha and has less caffeine too.

The parfait came with one scoop of Hojicha ice cream and vanilla soft serve, fresh cream, banana, peach, moji and hojicha jelly. I really love hojicha ice cream, the taste was actually strong but very pleasant - kind like matcha. Too bad they only provided us with one scoop, I wish to have more! The combination of everything in that cup is great anyway. And yuzu tea, so refreshing!

This place is definitely recommended for all sweet tooth or ice cream lovers. Anyhow, if you are not in Yokohama or Kyoto, Kyo Hayashiya also has branch at Haneda Int'l Airport so you can also try it there!

Hayashiya Chaen (林屋茶園) 
Sogo 10F
Yokohama
website: http://www.kyo-hayashiya.com/



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Singapore: Antoinette at Palais Renaissance

Last week I was in Singapore for a very short break. It was a very productive trip since I met up with many friends and my schedule was so tight with food and fangirl-ish that I didn't even have time for shopping. Okay, only one trip to H&M but that does not count!

Anyway, I have planned this trip actually before going to Japan so I told MK of Sleepwalking in Tokyo about my trip. She said she wanted to go to Singapore as well but had some plan for that week already. Only a week or two before, she told me that she could come for the trip and would meett up with me & her friend last Friday. MK was a ramen-deprived (actually I think she still is - hahah) so we had late lunch at Ippudo SG which review does not need anymore. We did some walking/shopping before heading to Palais Renaissance, like at another end of Orchard Road besides Thai Embassy, for some sweet stuffs.

I believe the real name of this branch is Le Jardin D'Antoinette which really reflects in the decoration of this outlet. It is as if you were sitting in a garden and having nice cup of tea with some desserts. Every detail of this place is quite fancy - even children's high chairs! They are very French-ish!

We ordered some fancy desserts/pastries to try. I must say it is very interesting and not bad at all.

I ordered "FORBIDDEN FRUIT" which described in Antoinette Facebook page as "green apple mousse, green apple jelly, roasted caramelized green apple, maple cremeux and financier sponge". It was very light and refreshing. Taste was not strong so it was perfect when you aren't fancy anything too heavy.

MK ordered "FRAMBOISIER - vanilla cream cheese mousse, raspberry jelly, vanilla creme chantilly, fresh berries, almond crumble". I think it was in an okay standard - nothing fancy about it but I think MK might have other thing to say about this as she hates cream. I asked her why she ordered this then since it had cream more than any other, she just said she likes berries - heheh!

Last one was ordered by MK's friend, LE ROYALE - dark chocolate mousse, almond succes, chocolate genoise with rum, almond hazelnut feullitine. It was very pleasant for chocolate lover who do not like it too sweet. It was very rich and nice. If you love chocolate, this one is definitely worth trying!

Too bad I didn't try their tea as my friend said it was really good but they only have hot tea and to have hot tea when you are sweating from the heat is just a bad idea! This place is definitely worth visiting if you are in Singapore and fancy some sweet!

Antoinette at Palais Renaissance
B1F, Palais Renaissance
Orchard Road, Singapore
Website: http://www.antoinette.com.sg/
MRT Station: Orchard

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New York: Magnolia Bakery

If you are a tourist, travelling in New York, I'm quite positive that someone would definitely tell you to visit "Magnolia Bakery" for their cupcakes and banana pudding. I think Magnolia was also on the list that Tee gave me but I was kinda ignore it since I told you I'm into cupcake much.

Anyhow, it's like a fate - I did make a stop at Magnolia two times during this trip! First was when I had dinner at Grand Central Station and I was thinking I should get some food as my breakfast. Then I turned around and found Magnolia there! Since it was already 6pm, all the good stuff have been sold out. I decided to try their mini cheesecake since it looked too good to be true. 

So I had Key Lime Cheesecake as my breakfast the next day. Oh boy, it was actually good! I was thinking it may not be that awesome since I had tweets conversation with J whom I would meet later in NY and she told me cheesecake isn't Magnolia's specialties. Anyway, the taste was very lovely; not too sweet and with a taste of lime. I think the "cheese" bit of this cheesecake is the non-bake one. Truth to be told, I didn't finish this but I had all the biscuit bit at the bottom. It was yummy!

The day later, I met up with J and after dinner, we strolled down from upper West side to Rockefeller Center to get dessert from Magnolia Bakery there. Unfortunately, it was already 8pm and all the stuffs J want have been sold out - apart from banana pudding. So she got us a small tub of banana pudding and we headed off to find places to sit down and eat that.

Honest speaking, again, I'm not a fan of pudding. But if you asked me how was it, I would say it was good. When you think of dessert & banana, you tend to think about the overpower of taste and smell of banana in that. Clearly, Magnolia's banana pudding is far away from it. There are slices of bananas in the tube along with some sponge cake (if I wasn't wrong) but there weren't too much. It was quite pleasant.

Magnolia Bakery is kinda like tourist spot but I wouldn't say you should ignore it. It is definitely worth a visit for all sweet tooth people.

Magnolia Bakery

1240 6th Avenue,

New York, NY 10020
Website: http://www.magnoliabakery.com/home.php



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New York: Lady M Confections

American style cake isn't really my kinda of thing (such as cupcakes) 'coz I found them a bit too heavy for my liking. I'd always prefer Japanese style bakery since it's much more lighter and not too sweet. So when I came across "Lady M Confections" which people said it's a Japanese style bakery shop. I decided that this place cannot be missed while I was in NY!

Me and M went to Lady M after strolling in Central Park to digest all our lunch (which happened to be Totto ramen which I have reviewed here). We were lucky that the place wasn't busy at all when we were there so we had our table and ordered something for our sweet teeth.

Definitely, their Mille Crêpes was on our agenda. We also ordered Strawberry Mille Feuille along with tea for our afternoon break. To say their Mille Crêpes was not sweet isn't exaggerating at all. You get the hint of sweetness in your bite and it was very pleasant. It's very light also. I can see why people loving this so much.

Anyhow, to me, the real winner from Lady M is their Strawberry Mille Feuille. That must have been the best Strawberry Mille Feuille I have ever tasted in my entire life! The cream was sweet but with the tangy taste of strawberry, it made this perfect. To be honest, just the thought of this already makes me craving it!


This place is the "highly recommended" place for New York. If you are heading that direction, do stop by at Lady M Confections for their cakes & stuffs. So good!


Lady M Cake Boutique
41 East 78th Street
New York, NY 10075
Website: http://www.ladym.com/





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Bangkok: Amor

[Super Quick Post]

N was craving sweet so badly one day she gave me a call to check out sweet shop at the renovated Central Ladprao. She said she want Mille Crêpes so after googling, we found "Amor" that seems to have nice Mille Crêpes.

Mille Crêpes

Chocolate cake

A quick browse through their cakes display, N chose Mille Crêpes and their chocolate cake while I was hunting for seat at the small shop. If you have had Mille Crêpes at Secret Garden, the one here might be a good challenger. It wasn't sweet much so the strawberry sauce did bring out the taste of the Mille Crêpes. Between this and Secret Garden's, I may go for latter one since it was a bit sweet to my liking but this one is definitely not horrible and I'm pretty sure I will order this again. As for chocolate cake, well it's chocolate cake. Nothing fancy but not disappointing also. I may try their other menu next time coz this isn't a bad cake/sweet shop at all.

Amor
B1 Central Ladprao
(Around McDonalds)

Tokyo: Seibu Depachika

It is as if I have abandoned this blog for good. I am sorry about this but lack of updates happened due to my responsibility in conducting regional workshop, advisory committee meeting and regional seminar of my office.

Anyhow, I'm back now and will clear my Tokyo posts (which only one left!). This entry, I'm bringing you to visit one of my most favourite place in Tokyo - Depachika or food hall of Seibu Ikebukuro Department Store. Depa is shorten from Depato or Department Store and Chika means underground so it means basement level of department store which is Japan, they usually sell food. Seibu Ikebukuro's Depachika must have been one of the best places for food shopping since it has massive choices of food you can choose to buy for take home or eat there. They also separated into savoury section and sweet section. I gotta be honest that most of my time there, I spent most of my time in savoury section.

Aside from stalls selling food, there are small restaurant with no more than 8 seats available for hungry soul. I made a stop to try Soba from Mukoujima sumida (向島 すみ多). Everyone was going for original cold soba set but I decided to go for my favourite soba soup with duck meat.

sitting at the counter watching them cook freshly made food for you

The smell of duck was a little stronger than the one I had at Gonpachi. However, it was heaven sent dish. The soba was freshly made and it was perfectly done. They have some lemon zest as condiment to add in the soup which made the dish very refreshing and summer-ish.

in the hot dipping soup with leeks & duck meat

Half way through eating, obachan handed me the Soba's boiled water - now that's authentic Japanese way of eating soba! I think it was about 1350yen for this meal. It might not be the best but quite worth the money.

Then next day, I decided to try Hayashi rice from Taimeiken which I was originally going to visit their original branch for Omurice but didn't coz of my tight schedule.

Hayashi rice is probably best to describe as stew rice. It wasn't spicy and quite buttery - by the time I finished this I quite wanted something spicy and tangy as it was too buttery for me. However, the beef in hayashi was amazing. When people said the meat melt in their mouths, I never quite get it coz I never experience it. But after eating this Hayashi rice from Taimeiken, I so know what they mean! The meat was tender and melt in your mouth. I wasn't expecting this coz the meat was like small and shredded so you would have thought they didn't use much of good quality meat. I was wrong. Definitely urge you to try or even visit Taimeiken main branch for their omurice and steak. Next time, I so won't miss it!

I made some purchases for sushi at their take home stall. They are fresh so people don't worry about getting low quality food. I don't think low quality food is existed in Japanese Department Store's dictionary.

I bought this 4 pieces of ikura gunkan for 300 yen - dirt cheap, so cheap that I want to live in that country forever.

This Toro set is only 1,300yen with Otoro, Chutoro, negitoro and makuro. I used to say toro wasn't my favourite thing. Well, I take it back coz I never had fresh stuff like this and it's cheap too. I want to eat this again, worth every single yen I paid for.

It would not be a good entry if I didn't have any sweet to show. Since I was in Tokyo during summer, they have this shop from Nikko selling their famous shaved ice.

What makes their shaved ice special is the ice they used is made from water in Nikko area that claimed to be natural with good taste. I know this shop before from watching Japanese TV show, Himistu no Arashi-chan when they had a special episode filming in Nikko couple years ago. So I sorta know how they made their ice and store them through out Winter/Spring in order to have enough ice for summer. It was quite cool to actually get to try stuff you see on TV!

I had melon shaved ice. The ice itself was very fluffy. I can't comment on good taste thing since I think ice taste probably the same like water but It was good esp. for summer. I read that this stall was only going to be in Seibu til mid September so they may come back again in Summer next year. Please look out for them.

Depachika

B1 level

Seibu Ikebukuro

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Review & cooking: Peninsula Hotel's moon cake and sausage bun at home

I know that I have been quiet, partly coz I lack of motivation to blog and I still have one last post on Japan waiting! That was until I met up with Tee from Passports and Postcards last Wednesday. I asked her if we could meet up at Siam Paragon as they are having moon cake festival there and I wanted to buy moon cakes from the Peninsula hotel, she was kind and agreed to meet me there.

I must tell you, I am not Chinese so moon cake and me doesn't have that close-knit relationship. I only know moon cakes that produce for the mass, like those chestnut moon cake from S&P. Recently, I found out that original moon cake is actually made with custard filling and one of the best is by Oriental Hotel which you have to make reservation in order to buy it (and even now, reservation is closed coz the orders are more than their capacity to produce). I did some research and found that one suggested that the one from Peninsula hotel here is also good. So I set my eyes on Peninsula's one but was gonna browse around first before buying. However, when I got there and got to taste their moon cake, I decided to buy it right away!

the package

There were 8 small moon cakes inside their sophisticated box. This box costs Baht520 which is quite pricey if you compare that to S&P and other mass brand one (which is about Baht95 for one big moon cake). However, taste wise, it cannot be compared, AT ALL.

It was custard filling mixing with salted egg yolk. The taste was just right, sweet enough. It was a happy buy for me, though expensive. But let's look that I would only get it once a year so that's not a big deal, isn't it?

Now on to the cooking bit. I was reading through Yumeko-san's blog, A Dream of Tokyo, and she has shared Bacon and Cheese bread roll by rice cooker recipe so I decided to make some adjustment by making it "Sausage Bun" instead. For her original recipe, please go to http://bittenbefore.com/tokyolife/2011/08/30/rice-cooker-recipe-cheese-bacon-bread-rolls/.

Ingredients:
150g pancake mix
60ml milk
15g melted unsalted butter
sausages
salt to taste

I simply mixed pancake mix, milk, butter and salt together until it formed into a dough. Then I spreaded them out and put sausage on top of the dough and rolled it up.

After that, I just put it into my rice cooker bowl and just pressed "cook". You don't have to worry about it getting burned or anything. Just let the rice cooker do everything for you.

The outcome bread is whiter than general bread. The texture is more heavy, not my liking. Taste wise was okay. I think it is easy way to cook bun if you are craving but I would find the recipe for more lighter texture next time.

Tokyo: Grom

Super short post as I am in a bit of hurry now. I was in Harajuku and planning to eat some crepe but got distracted as soon as I saw "GROM" shop on the street. I have heard about Grom from friends who recently spent their honeymoon in Italy, praising how tasty their gelato is so I thought I shouldn't miss it. I was early by 5 minutes as the shop opens at noon so I just stood there and waiting for the opening.

Got myself melon and bitter chocolate flavour (sorry that you can't see the picture well). Their melon tasted not too sweet, you can tell it is not artificial flavour which gives out a very fresh taste in our mouth. It's more sorbet like than gelato, for Melon. While bitter chocolate is very adult taste as it wasn't sweet much and really have that bitter. Wish I could have time to taste more flavours as all seem to be very yummy and perfect for hot summer days in Tokyo!

GROM
6-31-15, Mansion31 1F,
Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo



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Tokyo: Toraya (とらや)

Meeting old friends was one of the top priorities for this Tokyo trip. I managed to arrange a meeting with M, a Japanese who was my flatmate when I studied my postgrad in UK, for a meeting. It has been 6 years now since we last saw each other in Birmingham. You gotta thank Facebook for keeping us in contact and reuniting us!

I pitched in the idea of wanting to try "shaved ice" as it seems like a signature dish for Japan's summer. M knows a good place so we arranged to meet up at Akasaka. She took me to Toraya (とらや) which sells traditional Japanese sweets on first floor and in underground floor has cafe/restaurant that sells Japanese sweets with matcha and shaved ice.

M ordered herself shaved ice with apicot (氷あんず) which is one of the traditional flavours of shaved ice of toraya. I had one bite to taste and it wasn't too sweet. Very fresh and light.

see the red bean paste?

I ordered myself matcha shaved ice with red bean paste (宇治金時). The matcha syrup gave out very fresh taste and it mixed well with red bean paste. It wasn't too sweet. I gotta confess that by the time I finished this bowl, I was kinda freezing inside. I guess the ice really cool down your body temperature.

I'm glad that M took me there. Good experience with shaved ice, classic place for Japanese dessert and to catch up with her, that's priceless!

Toraya Akasaka Branch (とらや赤坂本店)
東京都港区赤坂4-9-22
Website: http://www.toraya-group.co.jp/shops/sho04.html


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Tokyo: Qu'il fait bon

On first day of my trip, after meeting L-san, I planned to walk around Daikanyama. I think it's quite up-scaled shopping area right in the middle of residence area. There were so many little shops so if you are into small shops and not overcrowded like in Shibuya or Harajuku. This could be the place for you. I was planning to check out Paul Smith but it closed that day so I just kept strolling around under Tokyo's sun, which was very hot if you ask me, until I got to my destination before going back to hotel - Qu'il fait bon.

Qu'il fait bon is famous tart and cake shop which have many branches in Japan. Their specialitie is of course the tart, all kind of it. They decorated the shop like those suburb cute French pastry shop which is very charming for me. Some branches have cafe and sitting are to eat at their shops, like in Daikanyama and Ginza, while the rest only have take-home stuff.

I placed my order for take home coz I didn't feel like having any. They asked how long would it take me to get to my destination and gave me the ice pouch to keep my tart at cooling temperature.

I love their package, it's so cute that their box is actually looking like parcel box so you can actually buy this for friend and give to them and they feel it is cute and special. Every little detail is always being considered in this country, you gotta love Japan for this!

I ordered Berry Fruit Tart (赤いフルーツのタルト) and cream cheese tart (ブルターニュ産 “ル ガール”クリームチーズのタルト).

Cream cheese tart was the real winner here. Though it was rich in taste but it wasn't too heavy while eating at all. I can taste the cream cheese in it and it wasn't overpower by anything. I really love this one.

The berry one was pretty medicore. It was okay but not that special. I think the strawberry one I had last Autumn was much better than this one.

This place is definitely worth a visit if you love tart. I would highly recommended to anyone who visit Tokyo to try.

Qu'il fait bon Daikanyama(キル フェ ボン 代官山)

東京都渋谷区恵比寿西2-18-2
Website: http://www.quil-fait-bon.com/


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Bloggers Lunch Date

Last Saturday, me and Tee were having lunch date after months of trying to arrange the meeting. We met up at Siam Square, the shopping and teenage hang-out area of Bangkok. It was first time in 3 years for me to go there, so talking about me feeling lost there among super young pre-teens and teenagers!

After we found each other, we explored "Digital Gateway" as Tee heard there are good places for eating. We decided to have lunch at Tenshou Yakitori. As name suggested, we ordered some yakitori, some deep fried and other food to share.

In the front, it's grilled chicken with cheese. The back is bacon with golden mushroom.

The deep fried curry pork was quite okay. Medicore, if you ask. Not bad but nothing special


Now this one is interesting, it was deep fried chocolate pork. Chocolate sauce was inside the deep fried pork. You can only taste the sweetness and chocolate throughout the chewing. No taste of pork. It's interesting but I'm not a fan really!


This is one is grilled chicken with cheese sushi (I think). If you like cheese, you should go for it really.


The french fries came with 3 dipping sauces, ketchup and some mayo based sauces which I wasn't able to identify. It was okay, I like the sauces anyway. We also shared curry rice with Hamburg. Hamburg is basically hamburger patty. It was okay.

So Tenshou Yakitori is okay place to eat, quite cheap anyway coz me and Tee only paid 600 baht for the meal (300baht each). We then moved along to some sweet. Crossing the road to Paragon for Marvelous Cream. It is like cold stone which you can mix your own ice cream with toppings. We decided to have berries with yogurt. It was sweet in the first bite but after that it was pleasant. Not too strong taste of yogurt which I like.



At the end of the day, it was such a pleasant day. Not just because of food, definitely coz of the company too!

Tenshou Yakitori
4th floor, Digital Gateway
BTS: Siam

Marvelous Cream
Ground floor, Siam Paragon (next to Crystal Jade)
BTS: Siam