Review: Taiyaki

First of all, what is taiyaki?  It's a fish shaped cake, without any of the fishy taste.  The taiyaki batter reminds me of a Belgian waffle batter, and it's poured into fish shaped molds.

Two of the fish shaped 'cakes' are sandwiched together, and in the middle is a filling.  The traditional Japanese filling is red bean paste, but they also have versions with whipped cream, vanilla cream, milk chocolate, etc.  They either come in a hot or a cold version; the cold version traditionally had whipped cream in it.

I've seen pictures of taiyaki posted on Instagram (as well as taiyaki ice cream cones that you can find in major cities in the US), but I got a chance to try the real, authentic thing - and dang it's good.

I'll be honest, it also may have been so good since I was starving and craving a sweet, snacky carb, which to my surprise wasn't super easy to find in Japan (home of the taiyaki).

While my husband tried the authentic red bean paste taiyaki, I was 'meh' about it since it tasted like sweetened beans and in general I'm not a bean person.

My go-to was the milk chocolate taiyaki.  The only place I found these cute little milk chocolate guys was in the anime/electronics district, and probably because of this, they were shaped like Pokemon Magikarp - so kawaii (cute)!

In general things tasted 'healthier' in Japan.  Reason I say this - the milk chocolate filling tasted like a milk chocolate pudding (and it probably was!)

I also tried the strawberry and whipped cream taiyaki, which reminded me of a strawberry pop-tart!  Very light and airy.

Takeaways:

• You MUST try taiyaki if you have the chance - I know I miss it!  Next thing I want to taste is a taiyaki ice cream cone in New York or California (I've seen them grace my Instagram page, and it makes me have food FOMO!)