This was cool. I think you should check it out when you’re next at Midtown. It’s an ice cream stand (and this appears to be the only branch of the original east-Ebisu shop), but they specialize in Japanese flavors. And it’s good!
That means that instead of bits of cookie dough crumbled into the ice cream, you get bits of karintou (fried dough dipped in sugar syrup and dried, I think). There are the obligatory Japanese ice cream flavors like black sesame, green tea, and pumpkin (which are all good things), but there’s also kinako, a dried, ground, soy powder that’s usually eaten as a topping on rice balls (with sugar syrup). Another interesting concept that proved to be really good in practice was ‘cherry blossom bean’, which had the distinctive taste of salty, preserved cherry leaves dissolved into the mix.
Without making too much of a fuss over it, this is a good example of a third way between Japanese and western food that successfully combines the two in innovative ways.
Phew. That sounded like a Metropolis review for a sec.
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