In September 2018 I was in Tokyo and while walking in the Omotesando area I came across something interesting: a tea room sharing space with a mozzarella cheese workshop. I needed to find out more…
The visit
The two businesses operating under the same roof are MuMu Mozzarella and Kaneju-Farm Omotesando tea salon. I was told that the two owners are friends, hence the decision to share the space.
Stepping inside the store, the first thing one notices is the mozzarella laboratory. There was an artisan at work preparing mozzarella cheese and other varieties of fresh diaries such as burrata and mozzarella with herbs.
MuMu Mozzarella claims to use Italian milk to obtain the real thing.
Past the mozzarella display fridge, you get to tea room that is made of a large squared tatami counter.
I was explained that they serve tea cocktails based on sencha, that is basically loose leaves green tea, coming from Kaneju-Farm in Makinohara, located in the Shizuoka prefecture and very famous for the production of green tea. Farm to table tea.
The menu was only in Japanese but the staff was kind enough to translate for me. They have a number of cocktails, both alcoholic and non alcoholic. The non alcoholic cocktails are based on tonic water plus tea. I chose a blend of tea including both green tea and yuzu. The iced tea was poured in a cup with tonic water and ice. The tonic water was not gassed at all and the result was a refreshing drink with a backtaste of citrus. It was served with glazed chestnuts.
They have two different menu depending on the time of the day: until 5pm is tea salon and from 5pm till 9pm is tea bar.
The tea is also available for purchase.
I asked them to serve me a mozzarella along with the tea… they were so kind to satisfy my request and I also had a delicious mozzarella that tasted pretty original to me (not a bufala, but a regular mozzarella).
What is a bit odd is that the two businesses share the same roof, but actually they do not cooperate on the tea room menu. Wound’t be fantastic to have tea and fresh cheese pairings? I think so, but while it is certainly possible to taste the cheese along with a tea, this does not seem to be their standard operating procedure.
The check
The mozzarella cost me 648 yen (5.85 USD); other more exotic types of cheese may cost more. It do not have local benchmarks to say whether it is pricey or not, but I did not mind paying.
The tea came at 864 yen, including tax (around 7.80 USD). Considering that they offered me a second round included in the price, I cannot complain. The total bill shown was much higher because I also bought a 80 gram packet of their sencha and yuzu blend. I liked it that much.
Where in Tokyo:
4 Chome-1-22 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0001, Japan
In Japanese: 東京都 渋谷区 神宮前 4-1-22
MuMu Mozzarella website: https://mumu-mozzarella.com/
Kaneju-Farm Omotesando website: http://kaneju-farm.co.jp/