Japanese desserts find their sweet spot uptown
HCafe’s flavourful variety means plenty of new treats to try
Canadians eat sushi, tempura and ramen on a regular basis. But aside from cheesecake, courtesy of Uncle Tetsu, Japanese sweets may not be as familiar.
Hiroyoshi Okawa, via his HCafe, hopes to change that.
“I love Japanese food,” said Okawa, 44, and that includes its wide variety of tasty desserts. “I have a plan to introduce more Japanese foods to Canadians.”
His two locations — one on Yonge St. at Sheppard Ave., which opened last summer, plus one in Unionville — serve Japanese cheesecakes in flavours such as matcha, red bean and taro ($7 and $11).
But the real draw are more unfamiliar delights, such as a soft, silky and very pretty non-bake sakura cheesecake ($8 for a small, $35 for a large). The two-bite wonder that is a fruit daifuku ($4) is one interesting rice ball. A pillowy rice outside gives way to a red bean paste and a sweet strawberry in the middle.
Just this week, Okawa and his team released a Japanese-style tiramisu in flavours such as sesame and matcha (a cup sells for $8.99).
And while Okawa indeed loves the food of his native land, opening cafes in the GTA was not part of his original career plan. In fact, he went to law school in Japan. In 2001, he came to Toronto and soon began studying at the University of Toronto, doing a degree in math and statistics. (He met his wife Yan Liu, a lawyer originally from China, around this time.)
Okawa worked briefly as a junior accountant, then his wife needed help with the business side of her real-estate law practice. He pitched in, and did work in real estate on the side as well.
In early 2015, in response to advertising his real-estate services, he got an unusual call from a man named Tetsushi Mizokami, claiming he needed to rent a place to live in Toronto, but had poor credit in Canada.
In fact, Mizokami is Uncle Tetsu, and he and his team were about to open their first Canadian outlet. “I didn’t care,” Okawa recalls. “I just wanted to know if he could pay or not.”
Pay he did, and was soon asking questions about running a business in Canada. Okawa found himself giving advice about how things worked here, and what Canadian consumers would go for. After the Uncle Tetsu on Bay St. opened in March 2015, Okawa even briefly helped out in the kitchen — the place was so busy that summer they needed extra hands.
But Okawa found himself increasingly interested in the business, especially since his wife had long wanted to open a cafe serving the Japanese sweets she had come to love.
In fall 2016, Okawa opened his own Uncle Tetsu outlet in Unionville — which wasn’t far from his home in Markham. The shop did well. But the following summer, head office told him he could only serve four different food items. Knowing just how many amazing Japanese desserts there were out there, that felt too limiting. So, Okawa got approval from key members of Uncle Tetsu’s head office, including the man himself, to open his own cafe and be a franchisee at the same time.
The company actually helped with the design and construction of HCafe, which opened in summer 2017. Here, staff could explore creative ideas and get a bigger range of treats in front of Canadian consumers.
But other people at head office began asking questions about Okawa’s new venture. “I spent a lot of time explaining,” he says.
After a few months of this uncertainty, Okawa rebranded his Unionville outlet as an HCafe. Now, he’s free to try new menu items, but also expand his business. So far, he’s working on wholesale arrangements with some downtown restaurants — sushi and ramen joints don’t have the resources to make their own mochi (rice balls) or Japanese ice cream.
Meanwhile, Okawa is looking for a partner to open a downtown location. More Japanese sweets in more places? Sounds good.