Ask any kitchen veteran, and they’ll tell you that while cooking is largely experimental, filled with dashes, pinches, and eyeballing ingredients, baking is an exact process, a measured dance that requires rigorously numbered steps.
If there’s anything the Japanese love, it’s attention to detail and creating perfection, which make baking and the Japanese a match made in fluffy heaven.
When Nagoya-grown Kumori opened here last year, its signature Hanjuku cheesecake—a light, soft, melt-in-your-mouth half-baked cheesecake—was such an instant hit that it earned raves on social media from casual chompers and expert foodies alike.
The word “kumori” means “cloudy” in Japanese, and indeed, we’ve yet to encounter a Kumori product that didn’t send us to cloud nine.
Those who live near SM The Block in North Edsa (lucky ducks) have easy access to Kumori’s first legit café, a small and cozy nook tucked into the ground floor of The Block, which we predict will become a dining hotspot once all the dining establishments have opened.
Piping hot
If you like your bread baked fresh and served with coffee, then Café Kumori is the perfect spot for you. Apart from serving coffee and tea, the café has a kitchen attached where they regularly churn out bread and pastries, piping hot and straight from the oven. For those looking for an extreme sugar high, the café also introduced dessert milkshakes in their menu. “We still wanted the milkshakes to be very Japanese, but with our own twist. In Nagoya, they really serve a Japanese sweet corn milkshake, but we added more cream, popcorn, and cereal for texture,” says Linfred Yap, managing partner for The Relish Group (Wee Nam Kee, Osaka Ohsho, Rock n’ Seoul).
You’ll find these over-the-top milkshakes only here in Manila, along with the Mozza Chizu Pan, a hearty, mini-pizza bread with chewy, honeyed dough and a generous heaping of mozzarella cheese (if you’re lazy and can’t be bothered to cook like us, we recommend buying a week’s worth of this and popping it into the oven toaster for instant lunch), and the Chocobo, a Pocky-inspired giant breadstick topped with chocolate and cookie bits.
Because bread and pastries are two separate disciplines, Yap says that they have different chefs developing each, which explains why the brand has strong offerings for both. We recently tried the Caramel Crunch cake, a small domed cake with a light caramel mousse and sponge concoction with a buttery shortbread base.
If you’re looking for something creamy and milky, we recommend the Krone, a flaky, Danish pastry shaped like a tube. In the display area, it is empty, but when you order one, they pipe fresh cream into the hollowed-out part infused with real vanilla beans, like barquillos on crack. Another creamy favorite is the Cottage Cheese. Before you go and think, “cottage cheese, finally, something guilt-free,” know that it is only the name that is guilt-free. Kumori’s Cottage Cheese is a rich, flan-like melange of Hanjuku cheese and full-cream Japanese milk (you might want to eat this somewhere private because you’ll want to lick the container after to make sure you get every bit of this insanely yummy treat).
The café is strategically placed near the supermarket, so customers can pop in to grab freshly baked bread to bring home with the groceries. Despite having opened recently, it gets very crowded during the weekends, so we recommend visiting early or during weekdays. Yap says that there are plans to expand the seating area to accommodate diners.
Want to tempt yourself with beautiful carbs? Check this out:
Café Kumori is at G/F The Block, SM North Edsa. Kumori bakeries are at Landmark Makati and SM Makati. Follow on Instagram @kumoriph