Well, I guess they can’t all be winners. To be fair, that’s probably more my fault than it is Kantaro’s. When he went to Kajitsuen Libre on the show, he ordered the peach parfait. Alas, that’s a seasonal item that isn’t available at the moment.
They have a variety of other fruit parfaits on the menu, but I went with the chocolate banana — mostly because, at 880 yen (about $10.50 Canadian), it’s the cheapest one they sell. The other ones, crazily enough, are generally in the ballpark of 1500 yen. Want a strawberry parfait? That’ll be 2600 yen, or about $30 Canadian!
!!!
Yes, for some reason, Japanese people have decided that it’s perfectly okay to spend insane amounts of money on fruit, and I really don’t get it.
Most of the more expensive parfaits at Kajitsuen Libre consist almost entirely of fruit, held together with a small amount of cream. The chocolate banana, on the other hand, is essentially an ice cream sundae with bananas.
It’s fine. It consists of bananas, cream, chocolate syrup, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and a scoop of chocolate ice cream.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, though I should probably be putting cream in quotes — the stuff on this parfait is either Cool Whip or something similar. It’s not great.
The ice cream is pretty middling and a bit icy, and the chocolate syrup basically tastes like Nesquik, but the bananas were quite good, at least? I mean, they’re bananas; they’re basically the hardest fruit to mess up (not to mention the cheapest), but they were sweet and ripe (but not too ripe). So there’s that at least.
And it definitely looks fancy. This place is super popular (it was absolutely packed when I showed up in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday), and I have to imagine that the high level of Instagram-friendliness is a strong factor.
Location: 〒151-0053 Tōkyō-to, Shibuya-ku, Yoyogi, 2 Chome−7−７ 南新宿２７７ビル 1F
How to find it: They have a few locations, but the one I visited is right around the corner from Shinjuku Station. The name on the sign is in Japanese, but it says “Fruit Parlor & Restaurant” right under the logo.
Featured in: Kantaro: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman — Season 1, Episode 4