Pandemic Melon Pan

An acceptable substitute, given the situation

Hello blog, it’s been awhile!

Like most of you, I’ve had little chance to be out and about in town recently, even though I’ve heard about new Japanese restaurants opening up, places closing down, changing hours, etc.

One thing I have noticed, in my neighbourhood at least, is the plethora of options for Japanese food available via delivery services that I had absolutely no idea existed. Normally I’m a bit meh on these apps, because I know a lot of them don’t give a fair cut to the restaurants, and when possible I want to support the restaurant directly. However, in the time of COVID, that’s harder than it used to be. Especially here in Toronto, where we’re under a state of emergency and all dine in options are completely closed.

I want to hope that the restaurants getting on board with DD or UE is helping spread the word that those restaurants exist and therefore are doing them at least a bit of service. I know I’ve found a couple new options in the neighbourhood and beyond that I never knew were even here.

Which brings me to the focus of today’s post!

A couple of weeks ago I started having intense cravings for melon pan. It’s been quite a while since I could get back to my regular source (....Japan), but my baking attempts in the past have also failed. I really just wanted to buy some and be done with it. I used up all my creative cooking/baking karma with the Dalgona phase (and subsequently a lot of Vietnamese egg coffees, steam milks and Thai iced tea batches) back at the beginning of the pandemic.

Muahaha, bring those tasty baked goods right to my door

In Toronto, traditional melon pan is harder to come by, and the only place I could think of that had it was Nakamura Bakery at J-Town in Markham. I thought to myself, well, I’m not willing to drive an hour for melon pan; not today, anyway. But surely something else more local must have popped up in the last 5 years!? Surely someone is making melon pan closer to downtown by this point!?

So I turned to the food delivery apps.

I did a couple of searches for Japanese food, and a couple of searches for melon pan, and I didn’t really find the traditional type that I was looking for, but I found something else of interest. Not too long ago in Baldwin Village (and two other locations), a new shop called Hattendo appeared selling cream pan, originally from Hiroshima. I’d seen their shop in Japan a couple of times; I used to walk by one when I was passing through Yokohama station. But I’d never actually tried their bread. I thought, well, they have cream pan with a melon pan top on it, and black sesame lattes, and they deliver to my house, so let’s give it a go. Ooh! Seasonal flavours!!

Turns out they don't really photograph too well, though

Hattendo’s “melon pan” is a pretty distant cousin of traditional melon pan - what I was really getting was cream pan with a melon pan top, so the interior was unlike melon pan at all. However, it did scratch that itch a little for me. And it definitely opened my eyes to the fact that there are a lot of good Japanese options that have surfaced in Toronto over the past few years.

Since melon pan day, we’ve also ordered in from Little Pebbles, a Japanese bakery in Kensington market, and I have several tasty looking izakaya dinner options marked for the next time we order in. There’s also a new ramen shop in the west end (an area that is sorely lacking in ramen at this point) called Musoshin, and they make shokupan! haven’t tried it yet, but looking forward to getting out there sometime and checking them out. Must be tough to open during this pandemic, so they probably need all the props they can get.

So the next time you’re craving Japanese food in Toronto, even if you want to go pick it up yourself to support the businesses, the delivery apps are actually excellent resources to find out what’s new around town.

In fact, I just discovered that I can get mochi donuts delivered to my house. Be right back...

Snackoos

My friend and former co-worker recently sent me this box of sweets from Japan. I was absolutely thrilled to open it - it was like Christmas had come early! Blendy Matcha Milk, Meltykisses, karintou, Koala cookies and more - there were even traditional Kyoto wagashi, sweets I took to tea ceremony and properly enjoyed, of course!

I missed Canadian candy severely when I was abroad, but Japanese snacks are just as exciting now that I'm home...!

Tea and Tsukimi

Photo from Secret Teatime's Facebook Page

This past weekend, I went to a nabe and tsukimi tea party held by friends from my time abroad. At times, I really do regret spending so much time in Japan alone and wrapped up in my hobbies - as much fun as I had trying my hand at aikido, ikebana and others, travelling all over Honshu by local train, and of course wandering everywhere in Kansai on foot and by bicycle, when it came time for JET events, I was so embarrassingly out of the loop that I imagine anyone not from my year would have a hard time remembering my name. My Japanese friends were largely in Tokyo, and many local friends, JET and otherwise, returned to their lives abroad. By my third year I was living the hermit life, and I have come to regret it a little since returning. Where I was antisocial in Japan, I now go out of my way to be social back home, via cultural groups, JETAA events and now, meeting up with a few familiar faces from JET.

I didn't even realize there were so many former Osaka JETs here in Toronto! I attended a dinner last month with a group of six or so and had a great time, though the tsukimi evening eclipsed (see what I did there?)  that by far. The founders of Secret Teatime are tea fanatics and students of the Omotesenke and Youkenryuu schools of tea, respectively, and Helen did her JET tenure in a city very close to mine. In case any of you readers forgot, I am a fan of tea of all kinds, so when she invited me over for nabe and tea ceremony, I could not say 'yes' fast enough.

Friends in Toronto, you absolutely must check out Helen and Sorlie's endeavors with Secret Teatime! They are setting up a studio in Scarborough, and are offering lessons in Japanese tea ceremony in the Youkenryuu style. Watching the ceremony on Saturday was a real treat, and we enjoyed luscious dark chocolates from Ambiance Chocolat. The chocolates were handmade and amazing, and brought me back to my days making trips out to the fabulous chocolatiers and bakeries in Kyoto. I'm really hoping to make it to more of their events in future and perhaps a few lessons as I've only learned the very basics of chanoyu. My roommate is almost certainly sick of hearing me talk about tea (though she graciously supplies me with it at Christmastime!) and I have a lot to learn about it, myself, so I'm looking forward to lots more!

Bambocheur

In Ukyo Ward in Kyoto, there is a fantastic bathouse that I absolutely love - Tenzan-no-Yu. It is probably my favourite ofuro, though it's kind of halfway between as it has elements of hot springs (onsen) as well as the elements of a spa. Unfortunately, it is so far away that any trip there becomes a big excursion. My favourite stop on my way to Tenzan is, thus, this classy little bakery a few doors down, called Bambocheur.

An awful Google Maps snapshot of Bambocheur

The great thing about Bambocheur initially was that when I saw it (and as you can see, it's difficult to miss) through the bus window I knew I was getting off at the next stop. Useful when you cannot ever remember the name of the stop you want and fear you may have passed it while distracted during the 40-minute ride.

The next-greatest thing about Bambocheur is the cakes.

Seriously.

Consider this perfect rainy Sunday - slip out of my stuffy apartment and take the train to Kyoto with a bottle of tea and some tunes in my ears. Buy the loveliest cakes I can find (top left was a pudding, top right was a melon cake, bottom was a strawberry monbran) and have the staff pack them up carefully with lots of icepacks to keep them chilled. Linger in the hot springs for an hour and drink nice cold coffee milk or fruits milk. Go home warm and happy, and photograph cakes because it just breaks your heart to mess them up. But you can't stay away so you eat them anyway. Yes.

Birthday cakes, 2010 photo by Gen

Coffee mousse roll cake photo by Gen

#lifeinjapan!

Plenty of people have criticism for Japanese confectioneries because they do tend to be less sweet than Western desserts. That's fair, since the sugar is what usually makes cakes moist. Bambocheur cakes could taste like sawdust for all I cared (and they don't!) and I would buy them anyway, because they are too too pretty.