Kyo Roll En’s alter ego
All-day dining version of popular café delights with selection of Japanese light meal dishes
When I learned that my favourite Japanese dessert café, Kyo Roll En, was to spread its wings into a savoury venture, I knew it would be good. But never did I expect it to be this good.
Kyo Cafe and Meal, this week’s review subject, was launched two months ago as an alter ego, all-day dining restaurant version of Kyo Roll En.
Despite its uneventful flagship location on a shopping plaza’s 7th floor hallway space, the 35-seater is as much passion-driven and extraordinary as its sweet sister has always been.
The menu lists a comprehensive selection of Japanese light meal dishes, all inspired by highly-treasured ingredients and humble recipes of Japan’s ancient capital city of Kyoto. Here you’ll find the likes of chazuke (rice in piping-hot broth), somen (wheat flour noodles), pasta and oden (hotpot soup) — most of them aren’t available anywhere else in Bangkok.
While the recipes take cues from comforting family fare, the cooking centres on house-made dashi, a broth prepared with dried katsuo (skipjack tuna) flakes and kombu (kelp), the two elements that help lend a profound umami taste to the stock.
For a casual gathering of friends, I recommend that you start off with an oden hotpot.
You can choose your own ingredients (50 baht per two items) from a collection that includes eringi mushroom, wakame seaweed, ika maki (squid roll), deep-fried seafood balls, tofu mochi, konjac jelly and shirataki (konjac noodles). Or go for a hachiban combo, a combination of the best eight items (180 baht), which I had.
To tell you the truth, my perception of oden had not been so favourable until I sampled Kyo Cafe’s rendition, which I found a delectable meeting point between dashi broth and assorted springy delicacies.
The amber-hued, consommé-like dashi is also celebrated in a form of breakfast chazuke. Of it, the rice soup comes with topping options such as grilled unagi (freshwater eel), rolled chicken fillet and mentaiko (spicy cod roe), plus a platter of condiments.
My salmon chazuke (159 baht) — a unification of Japanese rice, sizeable fillet of grilled salmon, generous helping of ikura (salmon roe) and freshly-poured shiitake-seethed dashi broth — proved as much stomach filling as it was taste buds soothing.
Dashi also lent an interesting depth of flavour to the café’s pasta offerings. Triple roe spaghetti (195 baht), which I liked very much, features mentaiko, ikura and ebiko (shrimp roes) with dashi cream sauce.
The subtle taste of dashi and nice aroma of green tea are showcased at the same time in salmon matcha carbonara (165 baht), featuring spaghetti with grilled salmon, asparagus and matcha-dashi cream sauce made from Kyoto’s milled green tea.
Although the café’s official culinary theme is “clean, light and quick”, I pleasingly rather found it “clean, homey and generous”.
Should you be in a mood for noodles, a soothingly hefty bowl of hot somen (135 baht) is recommended. It features fine and silky noodles with maitake mushroom, a large slice of rolled chicken, wakame seaweed and fishcake. You can substitute somen for matcha soba (green tea infused buckwheat noodles) for an extra of 30 baht.
Any main dish can be had as set meal with a duo of sweetcorn soup and wakame salad at an addition of 80 baht (a 118 baht value if ordered separately).
Despite the fact that corn soup can be a kitchen stunt, the café’s rendering
— a blend of creamed corn and miso — was super delicious and distinctive. As a person who could be turned off by savoury food with a sweet tang, I didn’t mind the subtle sweetness in the piping hot soup, instead finding myself enjoying it to the last drop.
The meal was matched perfectly with a 100-item selection of drinks and desserts from the cafe’s own menu as well as from Kyo Roll En’s.
For drinks, yuzu citrus soda (135 baht) and momo peach soda (115 baht) promise to satisfy those who in the mood for something light and fizzy.
While the rich and creamy options like Kyo affogato, a blend of charcoal-vanilla ice cream and freshly-brewed espresso shot (149 baht) and iced matcha latte with soft cream (159 baht) are my all-time favourite beverages here.
A Kyoto meal wouldn’t be complete without a green tea-infused dessert. Truly worth-having choices are matcha deluxe parfait (229 baht), sumi matcha anmitsu (185 baht) and Zen matcha roll cake set (219 baht).
But should you wish for something light, yuza granita and melon granita (89 baht each) are ideal.
The café’s second outlet is set to open at J Avenue Thong Lor on June 8.