Japan falls for the delights of the chocolateria

It’s long been a national favourite on a cold winter’s morning in Spain, but now Japan is also falling for the multiple charms of hot chocolate and churros.

At the end of April the first chocolateria opened in Tokyo, the idea of forward thinking businessman, Hideo Maeda. Newspaper commentators have advised the public to regard it as payback for the popularity of the sushi restaurants that have become a popular feature in every Spanish town and city!

Mr. Maeda has purchased the rights to produce the churros and chocolate recipes of the popular San Gínes establishment in Madrid, quite a coup considering that the chocolateria’s owners take such enormous pride in their long tradition of quality (a sign in their window reads “Año 1894”, a reminder of the date that the shop first opened). He hopes that his Japanese customers will become as enthusiastic about their chocolate and churros as the Spanish and, to help the conversion process along, staff members are wearing t-shirts offering clients a basic lesson in pronouncing ‘chocolate con churros’.

Maeda San has a few tricks up his sleeve for the Japanese market: he plans to produce his churros in several colours by using coloured sugars, so if you would prefer your churros to be yellow, blue or pink, you should head to Japan as soon as possible.

Given the nation’s obsession with pink Hello Kitty products, it would take a very cynical person to imagine that this brave entrepreneur won’t succeed in his quest to bring a little bit of Spanish culinary culture to the sophisticated consumers of Tokyo.

New post on at Thursday, 13 May, 2010, 9:05 am and is archived in Food and drink, Lifestyle. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.