Ice Cream City Tokyo

Posted By Jennifer Ho Dec 23 2012 · 0 comments · Snacks & Street Food

You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream! You get the idea. Ice Cream City is Japan’s premier destination for ice cream lovers. Whether you’re an amateur or a hardcore flavour seeker, this place can without a doubt satisfy your needs. National Geographic has even named it one of the top 10 places to eat ice cream in the world! Rightfully so. It boasts over 300 flavours combined and a good handful of stands serving the traditional American ice cream, Italian gelato and Turkish dondurma. This is definitely the place to go if you’re looking for something a little more out of the ordinary…

Side note: If you haven’t noticed, one of us is in Japan (check our IG – @braisedconfused – and FB accounts for regular updates!).

Just a note on getting here: the closest metro is Ikebukero. Then it’s about a ten minute walk from there. Ice Cream City is part of the food section of the Namjatown theme park located within Sunshine City Mall. The entrance fee is 600 yen. Other attractions in Namjatown are the vast collection of arcade games and a reproduction of the old Japanese city where vendors sold gyoza out of tiny stalls. You can actually order from the dozens of stands there as the food there is made to order.

Snake Ice Cream

We made a beeline for the Cup Ice Museum. Don’t worry – it’s not actually a museum at all – no plastic versions of different ice creams behind glass walls with drawn out explanations or historical background (although that would be cool). Instead, it houses a vast collection of different kinds of ice cream by the cup. To give you a sampling of the more unique flavours offered, I’ll just list a couple. You’ve got your ice cream versions of main meals like cheese risotto, shark fin and noodles, ramen, eel, soy chicken, snake and even Indian curry. You’ve also got ice cream versions of components to make a dish: sea salt, miso, soy sauce, garlic and mint, cream cheese, orchid root and taro.

If these flavours are too intense for you, don’t worry. They’ve got great regular flavours like peach, green tea, blueberry, tapioca, pumpkin and so much more.

Sake Ice Cream, Silk Ice Cream

Green Tea Ice Cream, Darjeeling Ice Cream

We ended up trying sake, silk, green tea and darjeeling ice cream flavours. I wanted to be more adventurous and get snake and garlic but decided against it for cost reasons. It would have been more for the fun of it – not sure I would actually be able to finish any of them. In any case, the sake ice cream was subtle and light. At first, it tasted almost like nothing – only the aftertaste gave our tastebuds any indication of sake mixed into the ice cream. Overall, it was pretty weak in terms tasting anything like alcohol or sake. Silk was interesting – apparently the ice cream was whipped with silk powder to create something with a whipped, light sort of texture. The taste is hard to explain but I didn’t mind it. The ice cream was garnished with a graham cookie with some sort of strawberry jam around and underneath. The green tea was one of the best ones – it had a strong, tangible flavour that was deep and delicious. The darjeeling pretty much tasted like a heavy black tea. Definitely edible but nothing I would order again.

Definitely recommended for any ice cream lovers out there in or visiting Tokyo. This is an experience you won’t soon forget…