rev:text
| - I was so excited to hear that Saryo (a famous dessert cafe in Japan) had opened up their first outpost outside of Japan in North York. Saryo is a small cafe, technically located at the same address as another famous Japanese restaurant outpost, Konjiki. The cafe has only 5 barstools and 2 chairs, but there is room for a few more to stand at the side of the bartop areas.
Like nearby Tsujiri, the dessert cafe specializes in green tea beverages and desserts (including matcha and houjicha parfaits, sundaes, and soft serve ice cream). I love that the flavour of the matcha and houjicha soft serves is quite pronounced (probably my current favourite of the various matcha cafes now in the GTA).
My friend and I ordered the signature parfait ($7.50), but while she got hers with matcha soft serve (as it comes), I requested mine to be made with houjicha soft serve. The whipped cream is houjicha flavoured as well. Plain and matcha anmitsu (agar jelly), shiratama, toasted oat cereal, and sweetened red beans add texture and visual interest to the parfait. My friend and I both found the oats to be overly crunchy and in over abundance, and would have preferred a flaked cereal to be added instead for crunchy texture.
So when houjicha desserts are present, why stop at only one? We also ordered the houjicha cheesecake. For some reason it took a while for the staff to plate and prepare this cake slice for us, and my friend was halfway done her parfait and had to remind the staff that she had ordered the cheesecake before they prepared it. Despite having a nice soft cheesecake texture, the houjicha cheesecake lacked the roasted tea flavour we were both looking forward to. The cheesecake had more of a chocolate flavour than that of houjicha, which was a bit of a letdown.
Overall I was impressed enough by the strong matcha and houjicha soft serve to give this place 4 stars, and would happily return to have more of this as well as try some of the beverage offerings.
|