Tsujiri Dundas — Restaurant in Toronto

Finally visited Tsujiri yesterday (Saturday) to try one of their matcha desserts. Tsujiri is a small Japanese matcha/hojicha dessert shop, with very limited seating. They have maybe 2 tables (each having 2 chairs) and 3-4 bar stools.

Tsujiri is mainly known for their matcha type desserts, but they also seem to offer hot food as well (oden, soba, chazuke, etc).

For their cup desserts, they have 2 cup sizes: a regular sized cup, and a cup half the size of the regular cup. The regular sized cup is used for their floats and shaved iced. The mini cup is used for their parfaits.

One thing to note is that their mini cup is very friggin small, but not as small as the other cup I got at this other Japanese dessert place. I was interested in getting the Brown Sugar Parfait ($10.75)... But the cup size was really tiny, so I refrained from doing a very expensive purchase.

I got the Hojicha Shaved Ice ($11.95). It's in the regular cup size. This shaved ice is very different from the shaved ice I'm used to eating (bingsu). The "shaved ice" was more like tiny ice chunks, instead of being "shaved". The shiratama was basically tasteless. The chestnut was good. The Hojicha soft serve tasted like a more refined and deeper matcha (cause it really is). The red bean was sweeter than expected. And in the end, all of the "shaved ice" melted into one sweet liquid tea infused drink. Very sweet. Melted pretty fast (I was holding the top of the cup, since it was so cold).

I found out that the special matcha chocolate that they had costed $18 for a very small, tiny box. The box basically fit within your hand and it was at most... Maybe an inch tall. There was no prices posted anywhere in the shop that showed you what the cost of the chocolates were. Had to ask.

Overall, I was originally hyped up to go to Tsujiri to eat one of their desserts at least... The shop was kind of cute. The prices on the other hand, especially for the parfaits - Were not it. My sister told me the prices used to be cheaper for everything on their menu, but I told her what I saw and she joked about how expensive these items were.

The Hojicha "Shaved Ice" was sweet and tasty - perhaps a bit too sweet by the end of it. Price wise? Meh. Pretty expensive, I guess. A one time purchase for me.

Maybe their drinks would fare better (price vs quality...

The wait was about 20min on a week day afternoon so definitely a very popular place right now. The wait was half waiting in line (the shop is small, so the line inside is a bit messy), half waiting for the food to be made.

The staff were constantly checking a piece of paper for instructions, and very very careful with the construction of the product. I appreciate how detail they are because the end result is gorgeous, but would expect this process to speed up as the staff get more familiar with the receipts in the future, but I took 1 star off because of it.

We've tired so far, the Tsujiri sundae, Tsujiri shaved ice, and yuzu float.

The Tsujiri sundae has many layers, the bottom has genmai which taste like smoked ricd crispy. The macha ice cream is delicious and not too bitter. On top for granish you have a mochi ball (kinda taste less so eat it with a bite of ice cream!), chestnut ball, and a pink cookie. The size is on the smaller side. Recommend for 1 person.

The Tsujiri shaved ice is very large, definitely shareable for 2 people. It also has two layers of ice cream (1 in the middle of the ice, 1 on top). I watched them made the ice where they would soaked the freshly made ice with macha sauce. Let it soak in a bit. Then add layers on top. The end product is the rich flavour through out every bite. One of my favorite thing to order!

Yuzu float taste like a yuzu slurppy with ice cream on top. I got the mix ice cream this time, but would go for only macha ice cream the next time around. Really really refreshing, and I can't wait to come back for this...

Today, I bought the houjicha frappe and was left kind of disappointed, it was when my frappe was done blending. Since she was in a hurry, she left the rest of the frappe in the blender that was stuck in the bottom. I was thinking of asking her to fill my drink cup to the rim but didn’t want to bother her. Although I asked for no whip cream she didn’t get to ask me if I still would like the toppings that came with it, oh well. Plus, there were only 2 customers buying right after me. This was around 6:40PM on Thursday March 17th, 2022 ——— UPDATE: August 11, 2022 - I got an overfilled Houjicha Frap with Matcha/Houjicha ice cream this time. It was spilling excessively on the counter and I had to wipe it off multiple times with many tissues as it kept dripping. The cashier left immediately after giving it and was busy doing something else at the distance so I did it myself. ——— UPDATE 2: September 19, 2023 - Tried out Kinako Kiromitsu iced latte this time (instead of my usual favourite houjicha/matcha float, as the ice cream was not available) and it didn’t disappoint. The cashier answered my questions well and wasn’t in a rush making the drinks. Definitely an improvement compared to last year. Though the drink was still dripping out from the lid while I was walking. Highly recommend for occasional drinking despite the price! Tastes...