Uiro at “Time Corridors”

Time Corridors 

¥ 1500 for tea service and admission

Opened in 2022, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Time Corridors” museum is one of the newest attractions on Naoshima, the “art island” in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Getting tickets is a little tricky—they’re timed and limited in number and the website is not especially user-friendly—so I was lucky to stumble right in just as they opened for the morning. The galleries house many iconic examples of Sugimoto’s work in a custom-built setting that manages to be both brutalist and emotionally sensitive. 

The admission fee includes tea and a sweet served in the Lounge. One room has tables made from the trunks of ancient holy trees, while the other has less exciting furniture but a better view of the glass tea room installed in a kind of moat outside the building (the tea room is mesmerizing even when empty and I can only imagine that I saw it in use I’d be speechless for days!).  

I ordered matcha and the sweet of the day, a serviceable uiro. On the spectrum of rice-based treat textures, uiro tends to be on the stodgier end—imagine mochi mixed with Big League Chew. I ate my way through it carefully and savored having a little extra time to look out at the tea house and the view of the island. 

Danpatjuk and Sipjeondaebotang

Danpatjuk and Sipjeondaebotang

The Second Best in Seoul

If you arrive in Seoul feeling cruddy, there’s a silver lining: many must-try Korean delicacies emerged from food-as-medicine traditions. After 15 hours on the plane and 30 feverish hours in bed, I was happy to spend a couple of hours slowly making my way across town to a little cafe called The Second Best in Seoul. 

Founded in 1976, the shop’s original stock-in-trade was the medicinal tea sipjeondaebotang (one website offers the poetic translation, "wholly and dearly protect and preserve everything”), a murky brew of 10 different roots and herbs including peony, milkvetch, angelica, lovage, cinnamon, and licorice. It looked like a mud puddle, tasted slightly abusive, and made me feel noticeably perkier. 

Having taken my medicine, I enjoyed my reward: a helping of danpatjuk, the hearty sweet porridge for which the shop is currently famous. Rather than letting all the ingredients stew together, Second Best assembles each bowl to order; this allows customers to savor the range of flavors and textures contributed by the silky red bean soup, meaty whole red beans, gummy ginkgo nuts, bready chestnuts, and gooey rice cake. 

From the unassuming name to the vintage decor, everything about The Second Best in Seoul is humble, straightforward, and welcoming. The menu also includes ginger and jujube tea, cinnamon punch, and a fermented rice drink. 

The Second Best in Seoul
서울서 둘째로 잘하는 집
122-1 Samcheong-ro
Jongno-gu, Seoul

South Korea

Pippa's Real Tea

Scone and clotted cream
Pippa's Real Tea, $2

In the ranks of things that taste better than they sound, clotted cream is right up there with fish fingers.  Thick and insanely rich, this luxurious spread is a staple treat in Britain's dairy-farming regions. 

There are a couple of ways of making clotted cream, the easiest being to slowly reduce cream until it's as thick as spackle.  A friend's grandmother used to make a new batch nightly, setting the saucepan of cream in a bain marie over low heat before going to bed; she woke each morning to find the perfectly thickened cream topped with a golden crust of crystallized milkfat--as cheerful and more reliable than the morning sun!

There are even more ways of enjoying clotted cream, in or on baked goods or ice cream, in fudge, on fruit...An Afghan version is mixed with tea and aerated to yield a fuschia beverage enjoyed on special occasions. 

At Pippa's Real Tea in Port Townsend, a container of clotted cream accompanies small, fresh scones and strawberry jam.  You can also order a pot of one of Pippa's dozens of loose-leaf teas to create the classic mid-afternoon snack known in England as a "cream tea."   The farther you get from Devon and Cornwall, the greater your risk that the "cream" component of a cream tea will whipped rather than clotted--but Pippa's doesn't disappoint!

Pippa's Real Tea
636 Water St
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-6060

Seabell Bakery

Seabell Roll
Seabell Bakery, $2

Seabell is a small strip-mall bakery specializing in "Japanese style" breads.  While the Japanese make and enjoy many types of bread, "Japanese style" usually indicates a matrix so light and fluffy that just looking at it makes you want to take a nap.  

Seabell's eponymous roll is an exemplar of its type:  the freshest, finest-grained hot dog bun imaginable, coiled around a core of real whipped cream and lightly sweetened red bean paste.   Astringent matcha tea sprinkled on top and stirred into the cream gives the Seabell a little bite and backbone. 

Seabell Bakery
12816 SE 38th St Ste F
Bellevue, WA 
425 / 644-2616 

Tofu Pudding Pops

Okay, so let's say you buy too much fresh tofu pudding to eat before it turns into a seething vat of evil. What to do? Hmm...

PUDDING POPS!

Admittedly, they won't make Bill Cosby turn vegan, but tofu pudding pops are pretty good. Matcha above, and vanilla below.

Setsuko Pastry

Green Tea and Cream Mochi

Setsuko Pastry, from $3

For two years, Osaka native Setsuko Tanaka has been supplying Seattle with the sort of Japanese-inflected French pastries that have become so popular in Japan (as well as in France). When she moved to Seattle 6 years ago, Tanaka hungered for treats she couldn't find: fresh Japanese sweets, light French desserts, and something in-between.  Having studied wagashi and pastry in Japan, Tanaka began to make the sweets she craved.  Gradually, her hobby became a new career.  

The featured sweet for March provides a great introduction to Setsuko Pastry's products.  The green tea and cream mochi (pictured above) is a delicate hybrid of East and West, old and new.  The mochi gets its verdant color from a generous amount of green tea, while the red bean paste filling is lightened by a non-traditional layer of whipped cream; the finishing touch is a preserved cherry blossom.  Like all Setsuko pastries, the green tea and cream mochi is fresh, made from scratch, and free of preservatives.  

The dessert platter pictured below displays some of the other items on Setsuko's menu:  a Mont Blanc topped with red bean paste and pureed candied French chestnuts, a green tea "rare" cheesecake, a syrup garnish made from a dark Japanese sugar, the green tea mochi, and two rounds of black sesame shortbread.

Setsuko pastries are currently available at Shun, Village Sushi, Issian, Kozue, Root Table, and the Panama Hotel.  Contact Tanaka via her website to be notified of monthly specials.  She also accepts special orders for birthday and wedding cakes, with vegan options available. 

Setsuko Pastry
206/816-0348

Hungry for more?  Check other food- and travel-related posts over at Wanderfood Wednesday. 

Uji Kintoki

Day twenty-five: Uji Kintoki
Kyu-Iwasaki-Tei teahouse, ¥600

The Kyu-Iwasaki-Tei house near Ueno Park is an extravagant cultural mash-up built for a founder of Mitsubishi financial group during the Meiji period. Architect Josiah Condor was born in London in 1852, but lived in Japan from 1877 until his death in 1920. Somewhere he along the way he absorbed the influence of enough other cultures for Persian, Tuscan, Jacobean, and Pennsylvania Dutch elements to be readily identifiable in the house's facade and interiors.

The complex once comprised some 20 buildings on nearly 50000m2, but although the property was designated as a National Cultural Asset in 1952, both the building and the grounds have been ruthlessly pruned. Only three of the original buildings still stand: a detached "Swiss Gothic Cottage" housing the billiards room, the western-style mansion were guests were once received, and butted up against it, a large Japanese-style house where the original family actually lived.

Today a large part of the Japanese house has been given over to a tourist-friendly tearoom (in sparsely-furnished Japanese houses this kind of coversion is a mere matter of giving the tatami mats a good sweep and setting out low tables and cushions). From the limited menu I chose Uji Kintoki, an pile of shaved ice topped with green tea syrup, a dollop of sweetened red beans, and a clutch of white dango dumplings, a perfect energy-booster on a sweltering day.

I placed my order at the register and headed for one of the empty tables at the back when a woman sitting at the prime front table (maximum breeze!) waved me over and insisted that I join her and her husband. He spoke a little English and we all had a grand time muddling through a conversation about my travel plans and the merits of Japanese sweets.

After years of studying the subtleties of ethnographic interviewing, my research technique has devolved to a single question: "So, what is your number-one favorite sweet?"  This lovely even drew me a little sketch of hers, which, sadly, is only available for a few days in early spring.

Higashi

Day seventeen: Higashi / 干菓子
Mu-an at Happōen, ¥860 for tea and sweets

Happōen garden is a little oasis in urban Meguro. The garden’s name means “beautiful from any angle”, but it is perhaps loveliest seen from the low-lying koi pond at its center. With tree-covered hills rising steeply around the pond and skyscrapers looming behind the trees, sitting in the pavilion at the water’s edge feels like sitting at the bottom of a green bowl with a concrete rim.

As views go, looking out at the garden over a cup of whipped matcha in the Mu-an teahouse is a close second. Decorated with stripped and rough-hewn woods and soft green and ochre paint, the tearoom seems like a natural extension of the world seen through the wide picture windows.

Alongside the matcha, a kimono-clad hostess serves a small tray of seasonal sweets. On this occasion, my friend Yoshimi and I enjoyed higashi, “dry” sweets of sugar and flour that are pressed into a carved wooden mold. Although higashi have a relatively long shelf life and are suitable year round, the pink morning glory and the green pods of edamame beans are specific to the summer season.

Special wasambon sugar gives higashi their delicate flavor and soft texture. Farmers in Tokushima prefecture harvest a low-yield Chinese sugar cane, then subject it to a laborious process that includes hand washing the sugar four times in order to remove the molasses. Wasambon production has been designated as one of Japan’s “Important Cultural Properties.”

Soft Cream

Day thirteen: Soft cream
Kiminoen Tea (茶の君野園), Ueno 4-9-13, ¥300

Ueno is a area of sprawling gardens, imposing museums, and a one-time black market. A narrow shop-lined street now called Ameyokocho used to be “ameya yokocho”, or candy sellers' alley. After WWII, sugar shortages meant that many candy stalls gave way to vendors of less-than-legal goods. Today Ameyokocho is a crowded, noisy, low-end street market.

I was having a weird green-themed day (see below) so when I spotted a green ice cream cone outside a shop specializing in Japanese teas, I decided it was—in all senses—a sign. I ordered up a matcha “so-fu-to-ku-ri-mu”, a Japanese version of soft-serve ice cream that only reinforces the idea that adding extra vowels to English words is the next best thing to learning Japanese.

In any case, it was delicious, with a strong matcha flavor that teetered nicely between bitter and sweet (the picture above is of the plastic display cone, since mine cried out to be eaten quickly). I ate on a little tatami-covered bench inside the store, and just as I finished, one of the guys behind the counter came over, bowed, and offered me a cup. Cooling off with some softcream? Well, how about a nice hot cup of tea to wash it down?

Kakigōri

Day eleven: Kakigōri / 欠き 氷　
Kyoto Sanjo Ohashi at the Aoyama Oval, ¥880-¥1100

One of the great joys of revisiting old haunts is reconnecting with old friends. My friend Trey and I went to middle school together but didn’t meet again until I moved to Tokyo, where Trey had been living for several years. For the first few months I was as helpless as an infant, and I’m not sure how I would have managed without Trey’s very patient help.

Good sport that he is, Trey agreed to meet me a stylish Aoyama café that specializes in posh updates of old-fashioned Japanese treats. When suggesting coolness just isn’t enough, the category of sweets known as kakigōri steps in. Basically heaps of shaved ice topped with syrup or stewed fruit, they can be as simple as a snow-cone or as elaborate the multi-tiered beauties shown here.

Trey’s was a variety of sundae, while mine, I think, was a 氷クリーム字治金時—in the excitement of the moment I forgot to ask for a translation. The mound of shaved ice is drizzled with condensed milk and topped with green tea ice cream, and rests on a baselayer of chunky sweet beans and chewy rice dumplings. 　

My apologies to Trey for making him look smaller than his dessert. They were in fact the same size.

Conbini Cakes

Day one: Conbini Cakes

For all the talk about Japan’s historic isolation, most of its sweets have far-flung origins. Baking was one of the technologies (along with firearms) introduced by Portuguese sailors in 1543, and over the following decades it spread like, well, hotcakes. One of the hottest cakes of all was, and still is, a dense eggy brick known as kasutera, based on the Portuguese castella (much more on this later).

Although ovens are still not a standard feature of Japanese homes, baked goods have become a part of daily life. Countless European patisseries ply their wares throughout the country and the Japanese return the favor by frequently nabbing top prizes at the world baking championships with their flaky croissants and flawless millefeuille.

At the other end of the spectrum are the buns and cakes on offer at every neighborhood convenience store, or conbini. The shelves of every 7-11, Lawson’s, and Sankus (“Thanks”) strain with the Twinkie family’s Asian cousins, foamy cakes that are not so much baked as “chemically activated”.

Because conbini are ubiquitous and 24-hour, they are often the first place that travelers taste “real” Japanese food. The first thing I ever ate in Tokyo was a plump pillow of crustless wonder bread filled with a explosive pocket of peanut-flavored goop; it was like a repulsive post-nuclear ravioli. Thankfully, things went better this time around; my first meal was a spongy, semi-sweet “Milk Lemon” cake from 7-11 (not pictured—I was just too hungry). Mercifully it had no hidden goo pockets. For the second course, I had the cake in the photo, a poundcake flavored with matcha (powdered green tea) and studded with azuki beans—perfect jet-lag fuel, and a nice refresher on Japanese flavors and textures.

These fusion treats were very thoughtfully provided by Alice and Drew, the English teachers for whom I am housesitting until mid-August. I’m being supervised by their cats, Nuey and Lala. Pictures of the cats, house, neighborhood, etc, can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14494106@N04/sets/72157606407285368