[Reviews] Hana Yori Dango cafe – special collaboration

Hana Yori Dango café, which is collaborating with Sweet Paradise café from September 2015 to January 10, 2016, has become a new attraction for young people who love eating sweets and enjoy the world of Hana Yori Dango. This time, our team – Grayheaven team – decided to visit this place to try all the sweets and discover the world of Hana Yori Dango game.

Hana Yori Dango cafe information

The entrance:

The entrance was decorated with 4 life size cut-outs of F4 and Hana yori dango banners. These life size cut outs were about 2 meters tall, wearing high heel is to your benefit so you can take a better photo with them. It is free to take photo.

The Café menu was placed at the entrance and next to the payment machine, customers can easily decide, and it helps the café avoid delays inside the café.

There are 5 prices* for Hana Yori Dango special collaboration: 2100 yen, 1430 yen, 500 yen, 600 yen, 800 yen.

• 2100 yen is for all-you-can-eat-and-drink option + 1 choice of HYD food + 1 choice of HYD drink + sticker
• 1430 yen is all-you-can-eat-and-drink option, no special dish included
• 500 yen is for 1 drink or 1 dish**
• 600 yen is F4 Dango set**
• 800 yen is F4 Pizza.**

**The price of these options are not including all-you-can-eat-and-drink menu
*Tax included

Inside the café:

Walking inside, we could see the café decorations found in the Hana Yori Dango app. The main colour of Sweet paradise café is red and pink, the colour’s combination is vivid and the cafe has modern style that suits the Hana Yori dango app theme.

There were chibi F4 members stuck on the wall around the café, a green board with a drawing of chibi F4 members, and next to it were all the messages from customers to the café.

Regular menu:

For all-you-can-eat-and-drink menu, each person has 70 mins to eat and drink anything in the regular menu. The café has both a savoury option and a sweet option. A tea and coffee session is available. You don’t have to eat something savoury before you come to the shop.

Here’s my suggestion to you:

• Skip lunch or don’t eat anything outside, you can come to the café and eat everything if you choose all-you-can-eat menu.
• If you want to try everything, eat everything in small amounts
• If you are not familiar with light tasting food, savoury food in this café might not be your favourite. You can ask for extra salt or spice, but they might not have the spice you want.
• After 7pm it is not so crowded, but it doesn’t apply to Friday and weekend in my opinion
• They clean the food and kitchen at 8:30pm, and the café closes at 9pm.

Hana Yori Dango menu (special menu):

If you choose the 2,100 yen option, you can have 1 choice of food (500 yen option) and 1 drink (hot or cold option) and you will receive a sticker and a coaster.

The first dish we tried was Okonomiyaki. The Okonomiyaki in this café was decorated with eggs in flowers shape. There were 3 extra pink flowers (photo) and a cherry tomato on top of it. The colour balance in the dish is good. The taste isn’t bad, it just tastes… different from the Okonomiyaki that we usually have, Shizuka also agreed (Shizuka is from Japan in case you are wondering). If you are looking for original Okonomiyaki that has Japanese street-food like taste, I don’t recommend this option to you. However, please keep in mind this dish is edible.

My rating for this dish:

• Decoration: 10/10
• Taste: 7/10

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The second dish we had was Anmitsu, a dessert for summer. The current weather in Tokyo is not cold unless it rains, so Anmitsu is a perfect dessert for someone who doesn’t like super sweet dessert. The Anmitsu set has dango, matcha ice cream, strawberry, red bean, a bit of whip cream, Agar jelly, a macaroon, a small baby leaf for decoration, and a biscuit. A maple syrup was poured separately in a cup, allowing customers to adjust the sweetness level. Moving on to the decoration, the colour balance was perfect and the dish won’t be too sweet if you don’t put in much maple syrup. The Japanese strawberry is sweet and little sour that adjust the sweet balance.

My rating for this dish:

• Decoration: 10/10
• Taste: 10/10

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The drinks that we chose were Café latte and Matcha latte. The café latte was fine. Matcha latte tasted like milk with the hint of matcha (Shizuka agreed). If you are a big fan of matcha latte like me, you would be disappointed. The decoration for café latte looked nice, but the matcha latte looked a bit off, I guess it started to melt when they tried to make both drinks together to bring out at the same time.

My rating for Café latte:

• Decoration: 9/10
• Taste: 8/10

My rating for Matcha latte:

• Decoration: 7/10
• Taste: 6/10

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My suggestion for Hana Yori Dango menu:

• If you chose the all-you-can-eat-and-drink menu, water or tea would lessen the sweet taste in your mouth.
• Cold drinks might be too much to drink and filly your appetite
• If you like drinking milk that has a light taste, matcha latte is a good choice.
• Boys are welcome to the shop

F4 member photo:

There are 4 photo of F4 members on the right-side of the café from the entrance.

The biggest photo in the café is a photo of Tsukasa Domyouji at the corner of the shop doing Ago-kui. Ago-kui which is a new trend in Japan is an action of lifting a girl’s chin to look at their eyes, making the girl’s heart go ‘doki doki’. This is a 3D art and as the drawing was on the walls and floor, that’s why it has a line, look like folding paper. It is okay if you don’t have high heels, you will look natural in this photo depending on the camera angle.

The second biggest photo is photo of Rui Hanazawa near the entrance. Again, I would suggest wearing high heels to take better photo because he is tall.

The photo of Akira Mimasaka and Sojirou Nishikado are the same size. Akira’s photo is at the bar and Sojirou’s is at a traditional Japanese house.

There are a lot of girls who came to the shop but it also has boys. Taking photo with F4 is the funniest part that we enjoyed. You can take individually or in a group. For example for Tsukasa photo, 1 main girl was having their chin lifted by Tsukasa and other friend can be in the background with an amazed expression.

~Special~

By installing the app and showing it that the café, you will have a chance to enter a draw. For more information, please read here.

Our prizes

There are 4 special illustrations by Mrs. Yoko Kamio for this collaboration, they are not for sale. However,  there are limited clear files on sales at the café, they are very cute, you can buy them as souvenir.

Final thought:

The cafe allows us to send feedback and put on the wall. You might find our message there （‐＾▽＾‐）.Hana Yori Dango cafe is a good place to relax and enjoy sweets. The café is located in Shibuya ward, a perfect place to hang out, relax and go shopping. Shibuya is famous area for fashion and it is popular with young generation. After walking around Shibuya for a long time, visiting this cafe is a good way to relax and enjoy sweet. Hana Yori Dango café is available until January 10, 2016 (Japan time)  If you have a chance to visit Tokyo, Japan during that time, you should visit the café and take photo to have some fun.

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*update: The cafe was popular so they decided to keep opening the cafe until January 28, 2016.

Written by Rainee + Shizuka
Information translated by Shizuka
Image by Janus Kay

Please do not take out without credit.

Thank you for reading.