Last month when we visited the Aoyama Coffee Roaster and noticed their signed autograph of Snoopy, one of the store’s customers mentioned that Snoopy fans like to visit both the coffee roaster and a nearby restaurant called Tofu Room Dy’s. We’re not big Snoopy fans by any means, but a little Snoopy pilgrimage sounded like fun and so we decided to check it out.
The store is fully vegan, and as the name might suggest, it simply focuses on one thing: tofu. For your main meal, you have two options - a tofu rice plate, or tofu sandwich.
If you thought that was enough tofu, you thought wrong, because you also get two extra sides of it. The owner first brought out to us a block of tofu, simply seasoned with salt.
He mentioned that if he put on any soy sauce (which is traditionally how you might eat tofu like this) it would hide the flavours of the tofu itself.
Second was another form of tofu, in some sort of soup.
He also let us know that usually soup in Japan is seasoned with dashi (i.e. fish stock) but that this one is 100% vegan (nice).
And then, onto our main dishes. I got the tofu pesto sandwich.
While my husband got their rice bowl.
The rice bowl came with some fried tofu, which was probably the tastiest bit (ha, and the most unhealthy) but the sandwich tasted great as well. I think sometimes vegan food can get a bit of a bad rap but I quite enjoyed it.
My husband got some sort of tofu dessert, which was quite sweet and good.
While I decided to go for their soy chai.
It seems quite authentic for chai (as in they cook the milk and spices on a stovetop) however it didn’t have an ounce of sugar in it so it tasted super healthy, to put it nicely.
I mentioned that the store is a bit of a Snoopy mecca, even though I haven’t shown you any photos of Snoopy - there was bits and bobs about the place, but it was hard to get a photo of some of it since it was near other customers’ faces.
Here was one stuffed Snoopy next to our table.
Plus a bunch in the display outside.
Finally, why does this place like tofu so much, you might ask? A look at the store’s website later provided the answer - the current owner is the son of a tofu seller and was literally raised on soy milk and tofu. And like father like son, he has seemingly grown up to love tofu as well. The more you know!
They make their tofu using seawater from Izu-Oshima, which is an island I got to see from the top of Mt Omuro. It’s on my list to check out some day - sort of seems like the Tokyo equivalent of Kagoshima’s Sakurajima.
Leave a comment