The cafe is conveniently located almost right across from Shirokane Takanawa metro station, towards Gyoran Saka. Shirokane is often known as wealthy residential area, and someone even coined a word "shirokanese", referring rich and shiny housewives in this area. The cafe may lack the shininess, compared to other cafes in the neighbourhood, but certainly has warmth and homeyness.
When we visited here around 13:00 today, the small cafe was almost full with about half a dozen groups. "We are so sorry, but it may take some time to serve you lunch. Is that OK?", a young shop lady asks. We told her we were fine, and waited for a while at a counter seat by the window. All lunch menu was, of course, gluten free.
In fact, it did take about 30 minutes for us to get food, but I could overhear heartwarming conversation. A family sitting behind us was saying that they are happy his daughter could have something with "creme sauce" here. A shop lady was relieved that another girl was happily munching on their gluten free cake, because "many kids wouldn't touch our cakes, because they look exactly like the ones that parents told not them to eat; kids can't tell what's safe and what's not so they get very confused". And another lady was thankful that she could finally pay a visit, as she recently started gluten free diet (it is indeed getting popular in Japan).
"Thank you soooo much for waiting!!" Our food has finally arrived.
Cake Salé lunch set:
Cake Salé is French savoury poundcake. Obviously original recipe uses wheat, but here it is substituted with rice flour and soy flour. You can choose three out of 5 or 6 flavours, depending on availability. The left one is sausage and corn, the middle one is pumpkin and cheese, and the right one is basil and potato. Each piece is pretty heavy, so if you have small stomach, chose 2 slice set, instead.
The cake we had was unfortunately a little too moist. Also except the sausage piece, the flavour was a bit too bland (though it definitely went well with ketchup). Although it is admirable that they created so many different flavours and made it gluten fee, if we were to rank this in 5-star rating, I have to give about 2.5 stars (sorry!).
Omraisu lunch set:
Omraisu is omelet with rice. Under that soft scrambled egg blanket, you find rice cooked with butter and corn. It comes with either creme sauce or tomato sauce. The thickness of the sauce comes from rice flour, I think. The omelet was cooked at perfect softness, and seasoning was just right. Mushroom added some depth to the tomato sauce, while red capsicums added sweetness on the top. I would give it 4 stars.
With 300 yen, you can also add a piece of chiffon cake:
The cafe had so many other sweets - chestnut cake, cheesecake, cream puffs, cookies... I promised myself that I would come here for sweets next time.
Kogomebana (小米花)
Website: http://kogomebana.com/
Be careful with opening hours - they close by 3pm - 5pm, depending on the day!
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