Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Eat Out Awards: Tafu

As I said in yesterday's post, Time Out's NYC readers nominated four new NYC tearooms for their annual Eat out Awards. I'll be talking a bit about each, starting with TAFU today.

TAFU is a major tea company in Japan. Their NYC tearoom is their first venture into the US market, and a welcome addition to the local tea scene. Their tea selection is exclusively Japanese, which means it's all green tea (maccha, genmaicha, houjichaa, kukicha, sencha, and ryokucha... but, strangely, no gyokuro). They carry hot and iced teas, plus four kinds of maccha (or "matcha") lattes. My personal favorite of their offerings, though, is their sweets menu. They get their sweets (most of which have tea as an ingredient) from Kyotofu, a Hell's Kitchen dessert restaurant known for their tofu-based sweets. (If you are, for even a moment, doubting the deliciousness of such a place, read this NY Times review of Kyotofu.) The houjicha daifuku (mochi-wrapped sweet) and the maccha chocolate both get my seal of approval. Next time I visit, I'm trying the Uji maccha cheesecake. Yum!


TAFU New York
569 Lexington Ave. is the address, but the storefront is on 51st between Lex and 3rd
9AM-8PM Monday-Saturday
212.980.1310

1 comment:

Steph said...

Wow! Sounds great and I'm so glad you've had the chance to go!