Customizable Yukimi Daifuku shop makes an amazing variety of sweet treats so that you can find the perfect one for you.

There are certain problems in life that it’s nice to have. For example, Japan has so many amazing desserts that just picking one can be a tough decision, and that’s not going to get any easier with the opening of My Yukimi Daifuku, a new sweets shop coming to Tokyo’s Nakameguro neighborhood this summer.

As the name implies, My Yukimi Daifuku is a place for Yukimi Daifuku, confectioner Lotte’s brand of mochi ice cream dumplings, and it’s going to very much be contributing to our delicious dilemma of having so many dessert options, as it’ll be offering 648 different kinds of Yukimi Daifuku.

▼ Pictured: Less than 3 percent of the My Yukimi Daifuku dessert lineup

My Yukimi Daifuku arrives at this amazing amount of variety by letting you customize the dumplings to your liking. You start by choosing from one of eight ice cream flavors, matcha, hojicha (roasted green tea), vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, banana, cream cheese, or mint chocolate chip. Next you choose one of eight “toppings” for your scoop of ice cream, but it’s really more like a filling, since the cream and its topping are going to be wrapped in mochi. The options here include chocolate ganache, tsubu an (sweet red bean paste), kuromitsu (brown sugar molasses), strawberry sauce, and mascarpone cheese. Finally, you select one of eight “finishers” to be spread over the top of the wrapped mochi dumpling, such as matcha or cocoa powder, kinako (roasted soybean powder), or cookie crumbles.

▼ The menu, with photographs showing the various stages of production for the Yukimi Daifuku

And even those aren’t quite all the flavors to choose from, as My Yukimi Daifuku will have special treats for early summer (June and July), midsummer (August), and the “lingering heat” of September. For early summer, the featured flavor will be a combination of frozen yogurt, blueberry sauce, and cookie crumbles, for a refreshing, cooling sensation.

The mochi ice cream dumplings are handmade to order to deliver the freshest flavor possible, and also likely because it’d be impossible to keep so many different combinations pre-made in stock. Perhaps in recognition of how hard it’d be to narrow down 600-plus choices, My Yukimi Daifuku sells its mochi ice cream dumplings in sets of two, with prices ranging from 900 to 980 yen (US$5.70-US$6.20) depending on the exact ingredients you choose. Even then, though, you’re going to have some decisions to make, especially since the shop will only be open from June 17 to September 23, meaning that even if you were to go every day, you’d still never run out of new treats to try.

Shop information
My Yukimi Daifuku / my雪見だいふく
Address: Tokyo-to, Meguro-ku, Kamimeguro 1-13-11
Open 1 p.m.- 8 p.m. (weekdays), 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (weekends, holidays)
Open June 17-September 23

Source, images: PR Times
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Even with a shop name like Mayo x Mayo, we weren’t expecting this much mayo.

The word “original” has a bit of a different nuance in Japanese. It’s not so much used to describe something revolutionary or inventive so much as something that’s unique to a specific place. So, for example, a restaurant that makes its own roux from scratch, as opposed to using any sort of pre-made version, might boast about its “original curry,” even if the restaurant’s curry itself is pretty orthodox in style.

But we recently stumbled across a mayonnaise specialty shop in Kobe that’s original in both senses of the word.

▼ オリジナルマヨのお店 = original mayo shop

Called Mayo x Mayo, the simple but inviting storefront is flanked by a little outdoor terrace section. After stepping inside the shop, we saw that they do indeed offer their proprietary mayo in both pouches and glass jars.

But what really grabbed our attention was the blackboard with Mayo x Mayo’s wares listed on it, which included a section for wagashi…

…a.k.a. Japanese sweets?!?

The first item under the wagashi heading was mitarashi dango. Dango are mochi dumplings, generally served skewered, and mitarashi dango is what they’re called when they’re slathered with sweet soy sauce glaze, but at Mayo x Mayo, the mitarashi dango come with mayo too.

We’re not talking about a little dab of mayo for color or a subtle flavor accent that might go undetected if you weren’t looking for it. Mayo x Mayo puts a ton of mayo on them, so much so that there might even be more mayonnaise than mitarashi glaze.

While Japan has a loyal foodie sub-demographic of hard-core mayo fans, our Japanese-language reporter Haruka Takagi doesn’t count herself among them, but she doesn’t dislike mayo either. She likes mayonnaise, but thinks of it as just one of many tasty condiments there are in the world, or at least that’s what she thinks when she bothers to think about mayonnaise at all, something that doesn’t happen all that often, to be honest. This made Haruka the perfect candidate for taste-testing duties, since she isn’t predisposed to love or hate mayonnaise itself. She was, however, understandably apprehensive about this unusual flavor combination would play out, and so, steeling her resolve, she swiftly bit down and tore one of the dumplings off the stick…

…and it turned out she hadn’t needed to worry at all!

To her happy surprise, Mayo x Mayo’s mayonnaise mitarashi dango tasted great! Part of this is thanks to Japanese mayonnaise being comparatively thicker in consistency and less sour-tasting than its western counterparts, and another part is thanks to Mayo x Mayo’s mayo having very little sourness to it at all, even in comparison to other Japanese versions. What you’re left with is a very pronounced creamy sensation, which blended deliciously with the sweet and salty flavors of the mitarashi glaze. Haruka had expected the two sauces to acrimoniously fight each other for dominance and for her taste buds to suffer as collateral damage from the battle, but they actually played very nicely together, and the mitarashi glaze that Mayo x Mayo uses being an especially sweet example also helped.

Mayo x Mayo charges 240 yen (US$1.50) for its mayo mitarashi dango, but you can also get a skewer of regular mitarashi dango, without mayonnaise, for 200 yen. However, you can’t get away from the mayonnaise with another of the shop’s desserts, their daifuku.

Daifuku are also a kind of mochi dumpling, but whereas dango are solid spheres, daifuku have a mochi wrapping that goes around some sort of filling, most commonly anko (sweet bean paste). At Mayo x Mayo, though, the filling also includes mayonnaise.

Mayo x Mayo offers two kinds of daifuku, both with a cream cheese anko filling with mayo mixed in too. The Black Daifuku (which is actually brown on the outside) also gives you the flavor of hojicha (roasted green tea) while the White Daifuku’s extra ingredient is honey (both are priced at 300 yen).

Once again, the result was much more delicious to Haruka than conventional wisdom would have led her to expect. The primary impression here came from the rich cream cheese flavor with a touch of saltiness, and though the mayo wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it was with the dango, she could still taste its presence.

Haruka had also picked up a pouch of Mayo x Mayo’s original mayo, for 680 yen, though, so she decided to add a squeeze of the stuff to her daifuku…

…and though she was no longer surprised by this point, she was happy to find that this was also a great-tasting combination.

Since then, Haruka has tested Mayo x Mayo’s mayo out with other, non-dessert food, and she reports that it works great for more conventional mayonnaise uses too. A trip all the way back to Kobe to restock might not be in the cards when her pouch runs out, but thankfully Mayo x Mayo sells its mayonnaise online too. And if seeing photos of daifuku has your stomach growling more so than the mayo, there’s a new dessert spot opening in Tokyo soon that you won’t want to miss.

Shop information
Mayo x Mayo
Address: Hyogo-ken, Kobe-shi, Higashinada-ku, Yamakitamachi 3-7-11
兵庫県神戸市東灘区本山北町3-7-11
Open 10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
Closed Sundays
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!