Live from Japan!

Just a few days ago, Jill-san wrote a post about the Grapple. It made me laugh, because I always wondered about how fruit flavors came about. After all, the artificial grape flavor, purple, tastes nothing like grapes. At least not any grapes I had ever tasted before. Until I got to Japan.

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When we were in Kyoto, Aaron and I had lunch at a lovely, delicious little Italian place. It was part Italian bistro, part cafe. Good coffee is hard to come by in Japan, so the prospect of having a good cuppa was too much to resist. I gave in to the temptation and ordered myself an iced mocha.

When the waitress brought out our drinks a broad smile crossed my face. The iced mocha was in a tall glass and it looked perfect. The coffee was a perfect, dark shade of rich, choclatey brown. There was a large mound of fluffy whipped cream on top, lightly sprinkled with cocoa powder, and it had a bendy straw (I LOVE that almost every straw here is a bendy straw).

Along with my iced mocha they gave me a long, skinny spoon. I immediately took the spoon and scooped up just enough of the whipped topping with a little of the coffee for flavor. I put it in my mouth, ran it over my tongue, and immediately noticed that something was not quite right.

It wasn’t whipped cream on top of my iced mocha, it was fluffy, white, buttercream frosting!! It was definitley not the light, fluffy whipped topping that I had been hoping for, but the sweet tooth in me definitely approved. It was rich and decadent and quite delicious.

I get this sense that the restaurantuers looked at pictures of fancy coffee drinks one day. They saw that all the drinks had some sort of white topping. Not knowing exactly what that was, they decided to improvise. Thinking, “Hmmm…what could we put on top that is white, and fluffy, and sweet?” Someone had the brainstorm that buttercream frosting might do the trick, after all they had a case filled with cakes and sweets many of which were topped with the same frosting. It would be simple to make a little more frosting each day for the drinks. And, before you know it, they all agreed.

And from that day forward, all the coffee drinks were topped with frosting. No one ever complained because, despite being unconventional, people enjoyed the indulgence. Most people do not sit down and eat a half-cup of frosting, even though they secretly want to, but this restaurant made it possible for the masses to do so. After all, you ordered the coffee drink and it would be rude not to drink it!