Tafu New York is a Japanese tea shop that opened last fall; this place is literally a 5 minute walk from my office and I've been intending to stop by and see what they have to offer for months now. Somehow it took me until yesterday to actually get around to visiting the store.
I didn't take any photos of the inside of the shop, but it is quite small, with counter seating along one wall and the display counters against the other wall. It's very tranquil inside and the staff were friendly and helpful, and were quick to recommend favorite flavors etc. Now, I know it's a TEA shop and I should have tried some of the teas, but my primary goal was to try the tea SWEETS....and I have too huge of a stash of tea to buy any new ones right now.
So, to that end, I bought a (very, very small) slice of matcha cheesecake and a little bag of 10 tea flavored cookies. As you would expect from a Japanese shop, a lot of attention was paid to packaging.
The texture of this was nice and soft, not dense like American style cheesecakes, with a strong, but not overpowering green tea flavor. With cheaper green tea flavored desserts, sometimes you get a seaweedy aftertaste, but there is definitely none of that here. It's a bit expensive ($4) for the size, but at least I don't feel guilty about it afterwards. Still, I'm going to have a try at reproducing this at home.
I'm not actually sure what all of the flavors are, but the green ones are obviously green tea, I think the paler ones are shiny slim, and the brown ones are vaguely chocolatey. That's my biggest complaint about these--I had a hard time discerning the flavor of the cookie. They do go nicely with a cup of tea, though, and they're cute!
So, although I felt that it was a bit overpriced, I did enjoy the treats I bought. I'd like to go back sometime and check out the tea drinks. In the meantime, look out for a post soon on my version of matcha cheesecake. :D
