Cafe Dodo: a gallery cafe with Japanese cafe comfort food

Area:  about 200m east of Yabacho Station 矢場町駅
Restaurant:  Cafe Dodo  カフェ　ドゥードゥー
Map:  http://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230103/23010039/
Website:  http://cafe-dodo.com/

Hours:  12pm-12am (LO 11pm)



This gallery cafe is a small shop hidden on the 3rd floor of a building in the small streets around Yabacho station.  It has a lofty feel and homeyness due to the sofas and dark wooden tables.

Today's plate lunch included hijiki, very standard in flavor.  The carrot salad was a stir fry with mentaiko, which actually worked nicely.  Not too salty, it had a different flavor than usual.  The salad's dressing was like a creamy shiso and chipotle flavor.  Whatever it was, it went very nicely with the Doritos sprinkled on top.  The ginger pork was very gingery and sweet, and made me want to dig into the white rice.  The Japanese like to describe food by how well it goes with rice, so I guess this dish was high on that ranking.  The soup was a simple consommé, tasting like a bouillon cube.    

For 250 yen extra, I added the house-made chestnut pudding.  It had a buttery shortbread cookie on top, almost tasting exactly like the ones I used to make for Christmas every year, so that was nice.  I was at first a bit disappointed with the pudding because aside from the chestnut piece on top, I couldn't really taste it in the milky pudding.  Just as I was going to give up eating it, I hit the chestnut pudding in the bottom of the cup.  It was slightly sweet with a hint of chestnut flavor and had a thicker texture (real chestnut had been finely puréed).