By, Shelly Huynh Posted on September 19, 2019 @ 11:31 AM
Izumi Matcha is an ice cream shop that opened two months ago, I found out about this place from one of my friend’s Instagram stories. I was curious what kind of place they went to. So I googled Izumi Matcha, and turns out that it’s fairly close to Silver Creek, located on Silver Creek Rd. across from La Crème Cafe. They serve matcha imported from Japan, black sesame, and vanilla, the classic ice cream flavor. They also specialize in takyaki, a fish-shaped bread with filling inside of them like red bean, black sesame, and custard. I went to the store with my mom, and it was quite empty during the late afternoon. There were no customers and only one employee by the counter. I ordered the matcha ice cream with red bean takyaki, matcha powder, and mochi. While my mom ordered the black sesame ice cream in the cup with no toppings. The service overall was really great. The employee was patient and allowed us to take our time ordering and served us our ice creams within 5 minutes, but that was probably because we were the only customers there at that time. The black sesame tastes refreshing, it’s not extremely sweet, but it does have subtle sweetness that doesn’t overpower the black sesame. The matcha was also delicious, the flavor was really strong and adding the matcha powder gave an extra hint of bitterness to my taste buds, it was way stronger than drinking coffee. The store gave us a hefty amount of ice cream so that I ended up with a brain freeze. The takyaki was the best part. I got the red bean filling on my takyaki and it was delicious. The takyaki itself has a nice chewy, glutinous texture mochi. The glutinous rice used to make the takyaki, is something unique because usually takyaki is bread-based. It is soft and the outside is smooth and slightly crunchy. The red bean is subtly sweet and I loved it, though I’m not a sweet person to begin with. What I like about Izumi Matcha is that the store, modern and clean, feels spacious. The most amazing thing about the shop is their recycled products. Instead of plastic spoons and cups, they have paper cups, wooden spoon, and bamboo sticks for the mochi. The ice cream was quite pricey, especially with the takyaki. It ranges from $5.95 to $7.50 with the takyaki. The cup, slightly cheaper than the takyaki, ranges from $2.95 to $10.50 for a pintto take home. They need an “open” sign so people can tell that they are open for business because many were standing at the front door and trying hard to see if anyone was there. They ended up leaving because they thought that the store was closed and I thought the same. I would recommend giving the shop a try if you are craving takyaki ice cream or looking for a Instagram aesthetic.