Snow Salt Soft Cream Cafe & Bar for grown-ups opens in Tokyo’s Ueno area with a bookish surprise

Adults can indulge in a coffee or alcoholic beverage paired with soft serve ice cream at this new oasis of calm in the city .

Snow Salt Soft Cream Cafe & Bar is a new soft serve ice cream brand from the Hokkaido-based company Daruma that’s said to use an exquisite blend of milk and salt in its base.

The shop is only a five-minute walk from the Hirokoji Exit of JR Ueno Station in a quiet neighborhood that’s in the exact opposite direction of the noisy Ameyoko shopping street .

Never ones to resist a sweet treat for grown-ups, we set our sights on checking it out as soon as we could.

We ended up visiting on a weekday less than a week after its grand opening, and lovely celebratory bouquets of orchids and other flowers still graced its entrance.

The soft serve utilizes milk from Hokkaido’s Iwase Farm and salt sourced from Okinawa –two ingredients from extreme ends of the country.

The heart of the food menu centers on soft serve dishes, including the standard “Snow Salt” soft serve, “Snow on Snow” soft serve combo with chunks of milk bread, espresso affogato, Hokkaido yogurt affogato, and whiskey affogato.

Beverages include coffee or espresso-based drinks as well as ones with alcohol such as highballs.

After ordering, we took a moment to look around.

While we initially thought that the shop emphasized takeout, upon closer inspection, we soon realized that there was a third-floor Picture Book Lounge where customers could sit down and eat.

The space is perfect for people wanting to take a quiet moment for themselves while flipping through the pages of a nostalgic childhood tale.

After a short wait, our order of iced coffee (480 yen [US$3.15]) and espresso affogato (780 yen) arrived.

We had debated getting the coffee when we were already getting espresso along with the dessert, but our craving for it won us over.

Oh well–it’s not like our office isn’t familiar with overly caffeinated writers who get up to weird antics … We resolved to first try a bite of the famous Snow Salt soft serve with nothing else added.