In Ibaraki, you have a lot of options for sweet potatoes. I talked about Imoyasu in Arakawaoki a while back with it's amazing sweet potato chips and awesome shaved ice. There is one company though, that is pretty famous around Japan for sweet potatoes and has locations in Tsuchiura, Tsukuba and even Chiba. This sweet potato giant is non other than Sweet Potato Kaitsuka.
Sweet Potato Kaitsuka (Kasumigaura location)
Sweet Potato Kaitsuka is one of Ibaraki's biggest sweet potato companies. They export sweet potatoes around Japan and internationally. As I stated above, they have a few store locations around Ibaraki, mainly southern Ibaraki. They have one store in Tsuchiura station, another in Tsuchiura AEON, and another in Tsukuba. Today, I m going to talk about the main Kaitsuka store and café, located in the Owada area of Kasumigaura city.
The wife and I were on our way to a beach in Hokota when we saw the store and decided to stop in. The first thing we noticed was how new the store looked. Apparently, the place had just been remodeled. Everything looked really nice.
Menu
This is a sweet potato place, so of course the menu is all about sweet potatoes. You can get a whole box of sweet potatoes to share with friends and family or as a gift. I have tried Kaitsuka's sweet potatoes before and I give them the thumbs up. The menu also has sweet potato roll cake which I have heard is excellent, sweet potato pudding which I can attest to it being extremely creamy and delicious, gelato, and hot apple pie (no idea why that is in there).
Next to that we have the café menu. I want to say that at this location you can eat in, but at the time of writing this post, the eat in option is temporarily closed due to the covid state of emergency. The menu mainly consists of sweets, salads and coffee. I had been told on multiple occasions, that if I came to this Kaitsuka location I had to try the soft serve ice cream. So the wife and I ordered the mix soft serve ice cream and a purple sweet potato latte.
Sweet Potato Latte
I was really skeptical about this latte. "Sweet Potato in latte form?" I said suspiciously. The wife was not and she just went right in. She told me it was delicious and pretty sweet. She also said that it didn't need any added sugar. I took a sip and agreed. That latte was tasty. It was sweet and a little thick which was interesting. I thought it was just going to be a blended sweet potato but it was actually creamy and quite delicious. I doubt there was even a hint of coffee in there though.
Mixed Soft Serve
It is my firm belief that if you are in Kasumigaura city, it is your duty as an ice cream loving human being to stop in at Kaitsuka and try this soft serve ice cream. It was fantastic. The day the wife and I visited, the temperature outside was about 34 degrees, so this ice cream was even more special that day. It was so creamy and you could taste the different kinds of sweet potatoes in that mix. You had the purple sweet potato and white sweet potato mix in this ice cream. The purple is a lot sweeter than the white but the white helped maintain a good level of sweetness so it wasn't overwhelming. The wife and I really enjoyed this ice cream and felt so refreshed after we finished it. We vowed that we would come back to have more in the near future.
As an added bonus, the staff gave us a bag and told us to take some purple sweet potatoes home, FOR FREE! They were outside in a box for anyone who shopped at the store to take home. You can get as many as you wanted. We took eight home, shared some with our neighbor and happily ate our tasty sweet potatoes with our dinner that night.
The wife and I really enjoyed our time at Sweet Potato Kaitsuka and boy, did we love the ice cream. The wife still asks when we are going back for our second helping of soft serve. I do plan on going back and I want to try some of the other sweets at Kaitsuka, especially the roll cake.
So if you are in Kasumigaura city, and are in the mood for sweet potatoes and some amazing ice cream, why not give Sweet Potato Kaitsuka a chance? Who knows, you might see me there, eating their delicious ice cream while grabbing some more free sweet potatoes.
Enjoy!
For more information on Sweet Potato Kaitsuka, check out their website:
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