If you haven’t heard of Tsujiri before, the company is a long withstanding brand in Japan, famous for its matcha green tea. Tsujiri started off 155 years ago specializing in producing its own green tea and opening its own tea shops in Kyoto. It has now grown to be a global brand with one of the world’s best green tea desserts and teas. Tsujiri has finally made its way to the West Coast and is about to open any day now in Richmond, BC. However, on this visit to Edmonton, I had the fortune of finding Tsujiri here, no line ups and lots of items to choose from their menu.

Upon arriving mid-day, around 1:30pm on a weekday, there were a couple of tables of people enjoying a parfait or a latte. The menu is extensive – I was having troubles limiting myself to only a few items to try. Luckily I was taking my items home to share with family so I was able to select up to 5 items from their menu.

I ordered a hot O-matcha Black Sesame Latte, a Houjicha Milk Float topped with matcha soft serve ice cream, a Matcha Daifuku, a Yuzu Tart, and a slice of Matcha Cheesecake. Overall the price was reasonable for an international chain toted with using high quality, world class matcha in its desserts – with desserts around $5-6, and drinks and parfaits up to $8 each.

My family had the O-matcha Black Sesame Latte – they commented that they enjoyed the matcha latte, however didn’t get too much black sesame in the taste of the drink. The original drink uses whole 3% milk, however we substituted with 2% milk to reduce the richness of it. I loved the matcha flavour but agreed that the black sesame was too light.

The mochi exterior of the Matcha Daifuku was super soft and melted in your mouth. The custard cream inside was made with matcha and was ultra sweet and rich. I wasn’t a huge fan of this, however on my next visit I will try their Kinako Daifuku – which is made of a regular cream custard and roasted soy bean. If you really love matcha and sweets, this dessert is for you!

A non-matcha dessert option at Tsujiri is made with yuzu, a citrus fruit similar to pomelo. Yuzu sweets are popular in Japan and Tsujiri offers several options, including a simple Yuzu Tart I tried this time. It was light and reminded me a bit of a lemon meringue tart. I really enjoyed the tart crust, light and crisp, and complimented the sweet and tartness of the yuzu filling.

The last pastry we tried was the Matcha Cheesecake, which I didn’t find as rich as the Matcha Daifuku as the cheese portion of the cheesecake cuts the richness of the matcha layers, providing a more balanced flavour than the daifuku.

My favourite of the visit so far is the Houjicha Float, a milk smoothie made of Houjicha tea, milk and ice blended together. Then it’s topped with matcha or vanilla/matcha swirl soft serve. I chose the matcha soft serve. Houjicha tea is a roasted green tea that has a smokier, toasty aroma and offers a less-caffeinated option to regular matcha tea. It’s my favourite of the green teas and was super excited to try the float. Between the milk smoothie and the matcha soft serve, I was in green tea heaven!

Despite my new year’s resolution to reduce sweets and get healthier, I have a feeling Tsujiri will be my weakness in the upcoming visits to Edmonton and when they open in Richmond. We can’t wait for the Richmond location to open, so stay tuned when we make a visit!

In the meantime, if you’re visiting Edmonton, Tsujiri is located in downtown Edmonton at 10173 109th Street NW. They are open 7 days a week – call ahead for opening/closing hours. More info for Canadian locations can be found at tsujiri.ca.