A queue of customers had filled up the Hei GaGa Bubble Tea Shop on O’Connell Street.
They stood in a horseshoe line inside the shop, where the sound of a glistening ballad played and the walls are decorated with pictures and figures of the Japanese manga character Crayon Shin-chan.
It was just after 4pm on Tuesday and everyone had come in to order flavours of milk and fruit tea.
“Try the Avocado Dream,” said Jia Liu, one of the shops’ owners, as she prepared some of the orders.
It was a thick smoothie-like drink. Pale green and creamy, blending avocado and milk. “There is some mango puree too,” said Yangang Li, the pastry chef.
In the corner of the shop, a girl recorded a voice note to her friend, asking if they knew about Japanese fruit sandwiches.
Li was leaning over a bright class counter, inside of which he had stocked brightly coloured sweets and desserts.
There were macarons and glistening pastries, and bags of slices of chiffon sponge. “Never waste chiffon sponge,” Li said.
There were also sandwiches, all loaded with whipped cream and slices of fruit, like grapes, kiwis, mangoes, strawberries and mandarins.
Known simply as fruit sandwiches, or fruit sandos, the treat was first popularised in Japan, before gaining popularity around Asia, says Li, who was born in Shenyang, a city in north-east China.
They look striking. The vivid fruit, the white cream and the chiffon sponge, which Li uses for his bread.
It’s one of those desserts that people love to photograph, Li says. “And for me, when I learned under a French chef to cook, I was taught this is about looking, smelling and tasting.”
A creamy sandwich
The fruit sandwich originated in the turn-of-the-century Japanese fruit parlours, like Ginza Sembikiya in Tokyo.
The dessert is simply sliced fruit, like kiwi, strawberry, grapes or mango, immersed in frothy whipped cream pressed between two slices of shokupan, also known as milk bread.
Shokupan isn’t a particularly sweet bread, says Holly Dalton, the chef and founder of Conbini Condiments, the Japanese-inspired condiments business. “It’s not like a brioche, which is inherently sweet.”
Fruit sandwiches are a snack that tend to be spotted most in cafes around Japan, or the dessert or sandwich aisles in one of the myriad convenience stores today, she says. “You might see them in some grocery stores specialising in fruit.”
Dalton says she’s never been overly taken with the taste of them. “They’re a hard marketing pitch. There’s a lot of cream.”
More places now, to popularise them, use something like a sponge cake instead of a white bread, she says.
In the case of Li and Hei GaGa, their own range of fruit sandwiches are held between two thin slices of fluffy chiffon cake.
Li doesn’t stick to a single type of chiffon. There are a few flavours, like vanilla, chocolate and matcha, he says.
The matcha chiffon has a very subtle flavour, and is paired with kiwi, red grapes and strawberry.
None of the sandwiches are overly sweet, which is in part why he likes to use chiffon, he says.
The sponge and cream provide texture, and the taste buds pick up on the fruit. There’s less sugar, he says. “My rule is not to have it too sweet.”
