Halal café in Asakusa—Vegan menu caters to international tourists
Tokyo’s historic Asakusa neighborhood welcomes a huge number of international tourists each year, even compared to other famous tourist spots in Japan. Nearby the hustle and bustle of the renowned Kaminarimon is Sekai Café, a newly opened coffee shop that specializes in halal food.
Although Japan can be a wonderful place for enjoying gourmet dishes from around the world and traditional Japanese specialties such as sushi and shabu-shabu have become household names in their own right, there are still relatively few restaurants that serve Muslim-friendly halal dishes. To support tourists hoping to avoid the hassle of trying to pin down suitable places to eat, Sekai Café offers halal as well as vegan (and vegetarian) dishes. It also features special recipes that take into account various allergies—and all carefully prepared by hand. Easy-to-understand symbols standing in for meat, shellfish, eggs, soba (gluten) and other ingredients also serve to effectively cover both religion and allergies alike with a single glance.
The café first opened its doors on November 11, a day dedicated to world peace in many parts of the world. “We decided to theme our opening day on world peace—more smiles for our international visitors, I say,” explains the café’s owner, Aya Fujigamori. “They came all this way to have a good time. Even if they’re still enjoying themselves here, fretting over what to eat takes away half the fun. I want this café to stay with our overseas tourists even after they’ve left Japan. I hope to be able to take this even further, too, not just with halal and vegan dishes but catering to all kinds of religious and other food customs worldwide,” she adds.
Popular favorites include the lunch sets, oven-baked chicken and vegetables, fresh salad pizza and grilled vegetable pizza (each ¥1,000), and their grilled seasonal vegetables and lamb steak (¥1,200).
Meanwhile, their drinks menu offers Amerikan kohi and burendo kohi (small ¥350, medium ¥400), caffè latte (¥400), tea (¥400), freshly squeezed 100% grapefruit juice (¥450), green smoothie of the day (¥500), and soup of the day (¥500).
Source article (in Japanese):
http://asakusa.keizai.biz/headline/204/
