12/02/2015

Minamoto Kitchoan London


Minamoto Kitchoan
Minamoto Kitchoan is not your average sweets shop. They specialize in Japanese desserts called "wagashi."  They are traditionally served during tea ceremonies.


Front counter
Seating area to enjoy your "wagashi."


Baumkuchen: Sugar glazed ring shaped sponge cake layers with almond powder and rum.


Green Tea Baumkuchen


Langue de chat


Tsuya: Red bean paste wrapped between two pancakes.

Chocolate and green tea mochi



Hakuto Jelly: Made from white peaches and spring water.


Usagi "Rabbit" cakes stuffed with bean paste and yuzu.



Maccha flavored mochi and senbei


Sakura Goromo: A sweet red bean and mochi wrapped in a cherry blossom colored crepe.


Ayashirabe: A crepe dessert with sweet white bean paste and condensed milk.

Kaki or "Persimmon" Sweets

Senbei: Rice crackers

Beika: Savory Japanese Rice Crackers


Oribenishiki: Sweet red bean paste and chestnut cake.

Oribenishiki

Maccha Mochi (Green tea) and Hakuto Mochi (Peach)

Mille-Feuille: Pastry layers with almond and milk chocolate.

We chose the hakuto jelly, mille-feuille, a dark chocolate langues de chat, hakuto mochi, and maccha senbei (green tea rice cracker)


Our goodies!

I have been waiting anxiously to try these desserts.  I've been waiting for an complimentary meal to serve them. 


Maccha senbei
Wasn't particularly sweet and had a lot of green tea flavor.  The texture was hard and crisp with just a bit of softness in the center due to a maccha flavored cream filling.

Langues de chat
Chocolatey, but not overwhelmingly so.  The outside was stiff and crisp and the inside was actual dark chocolate and not a cream filling which gave it a great "smore-like" texture.

Mille-feuille
Extremely flakey, as soon as I bit into it it nearly fell apart.  The chocolate melted and crumbled in my hand with every bite. Wonderful.  The pastry inside was moist and you could definitely distinguish the almond from the other flavors.  Appears to be a napoleon inspired treat so maybe not the best example of Japanese wagashi. But if this is what they are serving at tea time, I'm in.

Hakuto jelly
Served in plastic cup it remained chilled slightly even when left at room temperature. I turned it out onto a plate and cut it into fours as the little paper it came with indicated. Very bright and clean tasting. The peach flavor is really light and only slightly sweet. 

The mochi was too mushy to eat. I left it out too long and I didn't realized it needed to be in the fridge but now ya know.

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