Do you remember as a kid going to a coffee shop or a bakery and being allowed to choose something from the cabinet. I always wanted the most biggest, colourful, decorated thing. My particular favourite was that ice cream cone with marshmallow stuffed in it and hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top. Despite my mothers warnings that I wouldn't eat it, I would beg to have it and promised that I would. I then had to sit there and munch through dry, stale ice cream cone just to prove her right.
Fast forward to now and not much has changed. My good friend JB and I had planned a trip to Korea and Japan. The mission was to eat. We started researching the best places to go on instagram and got sucked in to all the colourful, weird and wacky food these countries have to offer. If it was shaped like a cute animal, all the better. Extra points also if the place had a queue, if the line was long it must be good right? We arrived armed with our list and our appetites and set off to see for ourselves what all the hype was about.
From our research we were expecting great things from Dessert lab in the Hongdae area of Seoul. They even had a little area set up to instagram your purchase. We ordered the cutest thing possible and probably the most disgusting. We both agreed it tasted of fridge. It was some kind of green jelly covering some kind of bland cake perpetrating as a cactus dug into some kind of oreo dirt which again tasted like fridge (and dirt). Yes, very cute but taste wise, no thank you.
How good does this little ice cream look? It would be if it tasted like sweet blueberries, but no, its purple yams and I think they belong more with a roast dinner.
When in Seoul you have to go to the Pooh cafe. I mean, who wouldn't want to drink a rose Latte out of a toilet bowl. Bearing in mind it was geraniums and not even rose petals. JB's one was a mojito latte. Mojitos are best kept for a Saturday nights drinking and don't belong mixed with milk. But hey, thats just my opinion.
And while you're there you have to have a pooh shaped pastry.
Now this was a work of art. We went to the C Through Cafe in Itaewon. There was a queue out the door so it must be worth waiting for. We put our names down and waited patiently. Barista's in white coats delicately decorate your coffee with pipettes. The time it took to decorate it must mean it would be cold by the time it gets to you. But actually when it did arrive we realised it was iced coffee and it was delicious. We actually couldn't afford this one so we opted for the cheaper ones which had animals on them so bonus points for us.
Next stop was the Line friends shop in Itaewon. It is basically a massive shop with all sorts of cute characters and toys set up almost like an amusement park. There are other branches around too. There was a cafe on the top floor. We really didn't want to eat anything but needed a photo so we bought these little morsels. They really just looked liked blobs of not much as they forgot to trim the edges.
The next stop was Osaka Japan. We had seen the W/O cafe on Instagram so set out to find it. It really wasn't a cafe, but a takeout coffee stand behind this cool door.
I had the iced matcha latte and JB had the caramel pumpkin spiced latte.
Next was the Kotori bird cafe also in Osaka. Here, you can sit around watching birds flying around while you eat cake. We had enough of eating "fridge" by this point so tried to order one to share. You guessed it, minimum order one each. This was probably the most vile thing we ate along with the cactus cake in Seoul. What could we do so we didn't offend the owners and also shock the other customers who genuinely seemed to be enjoying theirs. We played around with it for a bit like a child dispersing peas around on the plate to make it look like we had eaten more than we had. I did wonder about trying to dump it in my hand bag. Then, while the lady wasn't looking we ran out the door.
Don't these look like the most fluffiest, delicious little pillows of yumminess?
Yes, you would think so but really they just tasted like undercooked Yorkshire puddings. We had seen these all over instagram so went half an hour out of our way to track them down. We arrived early to find a queue outside. Whenever there is a line it must be good right? So we joined the queue and waited patiently. Actually the best thing about this cafe was we got to watch two English people having an awkward first Tinder date.
I actually quite enjoyed this green tea concoction from the market in Kyoto but JB again thought it tasted a bit of fridge. We both agreed the cornflakes added a nice texture and crunch to the otherwise soggy mess of ingredients.
The next place on the agenda was Tokyo. You can't come to Tokyo with out going to the Pokemon cafe. It was pouring down with rain so covered in our disposable ponchos we dripped into the Pokemon cafe. We waited in the line and were asked what time our reservation was for? Hmmmm do we need a reservation? This was one thing we had failed to do. Never mind, we took a photo in the elevator, we actually were the only adults there without children anyway and did we really need another serving of fridge?
We had seen this giant rainbow candy floss all over instagram in the lead up to our visit so we headed to the Harajuku area to track it down. We were not disappointed. It was delicious. We had planned to just have a nibble after all we are grown adults and also usually on some form of diet. But no, we ate it all and had red tongues to prove it.
Following on from the rainbow theme, we had to go to Le Shiner for a cheese toastie and a rainbow cheese hotdog.
The cheese toastie was two pieces of dry wonder bread with tasteless rainbow coloured cheese. Imagine the E numbers.
The hotdog was a little better but is not what I would call a healthy and nutritious lunch. But hey, when in Japan........
And finally, this little tasty morsel tasted exactly like a McDondald's apple turnover.
So the moral of the story is cute and colourful is not always tasty. But they do make great photos. My next blog post will cover the real foods of Japan! I think I will call it Uninstagrammable yet tasty foods of Asia.
So funny and so true. Our eyes are always bigger than our bellies. Hope the coffees were yum
Oh how I miss the taste of fridge...