Ranzan Sakuramochi is a cafe like restaurant located at Arashiyama near the city of Kyoto. The restaurant mainly serves shaved ice dishes and ice creams, but it does also serve some very basic light meals such as udon noodle soup. This restaurant is a very popular place for people to hang out in Arashiyama, especially during the hot and humid summer day. The restaurant is located on the second floor and the window seat overlooks across the street towards the Buddhist temple.
We were enjoying on vacation visiting Arashiyama and the weather was just getting way too hot around noon. We just had the lunch and were walking down the street, but we could not stand the heat anymore. Originally we just wanted to find an unique ice cream shop to cool down a bit, and we came across this place.
We went up stairs and got a table for two people. We immediately sat down and ordered the signature Matcha Parfait Kori, which is the Match shaved ice dish with mochi and matcha ice cream. Then the server told us we need to at least order 2 dishes, this pissed us off a bit, but the rule is the rule. Thus we ordered another small ice cream dish. Shortly after that, we figured that we should have just ordered a matcha drink as the second dish.
About 5 minutes later, our dishes are served. The matcha shaved ice was gigantic! The ice was piled inside the bamboo and was piled up so high and topped up with a scoop of match ice cream. There were also mochi, red bean, and chest nut placed in the ice. The whole dish looks so green. As we dogged deeper into the dish, there were some jellies at the bottom of the dish. The jellies were transparent and not sure if it had any taste to it.
The signature dish was 950 Japanese Yen, so it was a bit on the expensive side. Although it was slightly expensive, it was definitely worth a try. We would just order a tiny small dish for the second order next time though.
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