I'm missing this.
I'm missing this a lot.
No doubt, it's been a couple of months since i had this gorgeous afternoon tea at Ka-En Grill & Sushi Bar, but I remember the ambience, I remember the food, and I remember the tea.
A friend had introduced me this place, saying that besides a lovely lunch menu, they also had an interesting tea time menu and what with it being Lunar New Year season, why not try?
So off it was to Capitol Building at the junction of North Bridge Road and Stamford Road where, upon arrival, we were seated in a sort of booth right under the aircon.
If you thought I minded, nope, not one bit at all.
I love my cools, I love my chills and I don't mind it one bit at all when I've to sit under a blast.
Especially since there was a wonderful pot of tea, and it made the cup in my hand feel so much warmer, cozier, even comforting.
Far from the regular favorites of English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Peppermint, here they had Melon Manpuku, Momotaro, Ume Ume and KYO Breakfast.
Green tea blended with melon sounded interesting.
So was green tea blended with white peach, and green tea blended with plum and cherry blossoms.
Melon Manpuku was my choice this afternoon.
And can I say that I've never been so impressed with what I think is the taste of cantaloupe/rock melon in a cup of clear, refreshing tea?
If I was amazed by the flavor of melon, I was just as amazed by the Momotaro that my friend chose.
Peach is, may I say, a distinctly difficult flavor to capture and the tea had its essence hinted onto the base of light green.
The food arrived all at once not long after the tea was served, so on the table in front of us were the Cage of Desserts, there was the Assorted Sashimi, the Kaki Fry, the Aburi Mentaiko Tamago Yaki with Ikura and the Truffle Edamame.
It was quite fun, I assure you, trying to figure out which dish was which.
Most of it was easy.
I mean, an edamame is an edamame is an edamame.
You can't go far from how a bean looks like.
But the taste of truffle mixed with the bean is something else altogether. At first you think it's just savory. After a while however you realize that the smoke of the truffle makes the slightly salty taste of the edamame stand out and all at once you're enveloped by a solid globe of flavors you can't describe.
I was particularly intrigued by the Miyazaki Wagyu Sando with Crispy Seaweed.
That is, when you consider that boring ol' me had thought it would be a sando of bread, some sort of bun or at least some sort of flour.
But that's not how they do things here and what they called the sando was actually a mound of rice sandwiched between the slice of wagyu and the (tempura-like) seaweed.
I'm not sure whether you were supposed to eat it all together but I ate it separately, beginning first with the wagyu then the rice (no, it wasn't plain) then finally the seaweed- with my hands.
It wasn't just the sando that intrigued me.
There was also the Aburi Mentaiko Tamago Yaki with Ikura.
Don't be mistaken by the seemingly complicated long name.
This dish turned out looking surprisingly simple.
Now, I'm no gourmet person, I'm not able to go into the intricacies of how this dish was prepared, but let's just say that it looked like a oblong-shaped piece of omelet (Tamago) made yaki-style (cooked over direct heat) and aburi-style (flame-seared) with a dribble of Mentaiko sauce and several cute little balls of ikura on top.
There was a bit of a burnt, smoky taste to it; inside was soft and faintly sweet, and so each bite got you the blend of sweet with the salty and the savory from the Mentaiko.
Plus there was that tiny little burst from the vermillion fish roe.
What I liked about the savory part of this set was that we got to try all the varied styles of Japanese cooking.
On one hand you had the aburi style, the yaki style, the fry-style and the grill-style, but you also had it sashimi-style which, with the (Assorted) Sashimi- I think there was tuna and salmon- made it feel somewhat luxurious.
The Kaki Fry too did not disappoint.
I wish I could remember what it was that was inside though.
It might have been an oyster.
It might have been a potato croquette.
It might have been something else altogether.
Very terrible, but I can't seem to remember.
I'm thankful for it though.
Likewise in the same way I'm thankful for the variety of desserts, which, by the way, throughout this entire time had been sitting quietly in their cage waiting to be released.
I loved everything that was in there.
In particular, the Dango, which, although might be familiar to some, ordinary to others, was a dessert that I had, for the longest time, wanted to try.
To some of us it might not look much- I mean, it is a little like three balls of tang yuan- and it is- literally- being (also) made out of glutinous rice but the syrup- whatever it was- I think it was brown sugar- made it all the more special.
Same thing too for the Daifuku.
I don't have a special picture of it, but it was a Mitarashi Daifuku (in pink!) and if I'm not wrong, it was filled with plenty, plenty of cream.
We also had two different types of mochi.
There was a Chestnut Sasa Mochi, and a Matcha Mochi.
Interestingly, which color of Mochi belonged to which flavor, I now can't recall.
Maybe the white one contained Chestnut, and the yellow one (with the self-planted sprig of rosemary on top) Matcha.
Or it might have been the other way around.
Doesn't matter.
What's important is that I had a most lovely time eating it all.
Is there a correct way to have Mochi and Daifuku, by the way?
Like, are you supposed to eat it all in one bite?
Are you supposed to bite half of it and finish it before taking the other half?
Me, I just ate it the way I wanted to.
Small bites; so that I could savor the glutinous rice with the sweet filling a bit more.
I can safely say that I've missed sugar.
I can also safely say that I like my palate of sweetness to last a little longer.
It is, after all, not every day that I get to have a lovely serving of brown sugar syrup that I can choose to finish (or otherwise), a mouthful of sweet fresh cream, a big slice of Yuzu Blueberry Cake (with the thickest layer of blueberry jam-jelly filling I'd ever seen) and a Kinako Roll which reminded me a little of a thick sponge cake folded into a neat, precise cute little roll.
