I am a big fan of Japanese food. I love sushi, sashimi and also the family style Japanese food.
There is a restaurant called Temari in Rockville, Maryland and it is specialized in providing family style Japanese food. This restaurant is one of my favorites. They provide a large variety of Japaneses home style dishes and also some unique Japanese dessert that I can’t find elsewhere. As you all know I LOVE desserts, so this post is not gonna be about the main dishes of the store but their dessert.
Recently I found out they have a Winter special dessert which available on weekends only. The dessert is called zenzai, it is a kind of traditional Japanese dessert. Zenzai is a sweet red bean soup served hot in a bowl with mochi inside. There are two styles of zenzai available in the store: the regular zenzai and the cream zenzai. The one I’m going to introduce is the cream zenzai.
This is a cream zenzai.
The difference between regular zenzai and cream zenzai is a scoop of vanilla ice-cream is added into the cream one. This scoop of ice-cream is the element which makes the cream zenzai an unique dessert.
The way I eat this dessert is get some ice-cream with the spoon and also some red bean soup, then eat both of them together. The coldness of the ice-cream and the hotness of the red bean soup will form an interesting hot and cold experience inside your mouth. I like the feeling of having coldness and warmth inside my mouth at the same time.
The ice-cream brings more than just the coldness. When the ice-cream melts in the red bean soup, it adds a creamy texture and vanilla scent to the soup. It enhances the taste of the soup. The chewy texture of mochi also adds a different taste to the soup and makes the dessert more rich.
Both zenzai and cream zenzai are Winter limited dessert and only available on weekends. If you are interested in trying this dessert, go when the weather is still cold!
Temari Japanese Cafe
Address: 1043 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD 20852
Phone: (301) 340-7720
Virgi's Little Corner 