When City Foundry STL opens next year, Mokyu Mokyu (pronounced MOKE-you MOKE-you) will become the first eatery in St. Louis to serve Taiyaki, a fusion of Japanese cuisine and Korean ingenuity. The signature item will be a fish-shaped waffle cone served with a choice of vanilla custard or red bean filling, housemade ice cream, and a variety of toppings.
Co-owner Laura Leister and chef James Lettau (who also run Pieces: The St. Louis Board Game Bar & Café in Soulard) traveled to Japan to do some first-hand research. Along the way, they encountered sights, sounds, and tastes befitting of their forthcoming eatery’s name (the Japanese expression for “when you encounter something so aesthetically pleasing it leaves you at a loss for words”). Leister shared a travelogue of her culinary adventure.
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St. Louis is not a city for austere diets. We’re adventurous with our cuisine—mashing up influences since French colonialism—and most of us will gladly slap a sticky-handed high five with anyone willing to dive into something new and unexpected at our tables. For me, I am a first-generation Filipino-American with strong East Asian ancestry. My family’s influence and diversity filled me with an adventurous spirit and a passion for food.
This is why it has been my years-long dream to introduce one of my favorite East Asian desserts to St. Louis. Taiyaki is a sweet cake from Japan, cooked to perfection in uniquely designed, fish-shaped waffle irons. Each chef has a secret batter recipe, and the center is traditionally filled with sweetened azuki (red) beans akin to jelly found in the center of a donut. The pastry is slightly crispier than a Belgian waffle with a soft and creamy center. The fish shape, a Japanese red sea bream, or “Tai,” represents good luck.
I’ve been in love with the taste, texture, and symbolism of Taiyaki since my first bite in Japan many years ago. So, in the name of research, I booked a ticket with my business partner and husband James Lettau (head chef of Pieces: The St. Louis Board Game Bar and Cafe) and headed east with a sworn mission to visit every Taiyaki shop that we could find. (It’s a tough life, I know.) We took on this challenge in preparation for opening Mokyu Mokyu, a sweets-and-treats eatery that will be located in City Foundry when it opens in 2020.
Our first stop was Taiyaki Hiiragi in Tokyo’s Ebisu district. I wanted to savor every morsel, but it had been too long since I had tasted my last Taiyaki. I don’t remember chewing or breathing!
The early part of our trip was a deep dive into Taiyaki’s past. James and I boarded a high-speed bullet train and headed to Osaka, the birthplace of Taiyaki inventor Sejirō Kanbei, to taste the history behind the sweet pastry. As I stared out the train window, Mount Fuji whizzed past me on the horizon. I thought about how I always take out-of-town friends to the top of the Gateway Arch when they visit. I laughed to myself, wondering if the locals here drag all of their visitors to the top of Fuji’s snow cap for “the best views of the city.”
Osaka is truly a food lover’s paradise. Talk about inspiration! Almost every road in the city intersects with a long food hall or “shopping street” filled with restaurants, open air grocers, and bakeries. I stopped counting how many shopping streets I encountered after hitting 63 on our third day, knowing I’d just gotten a glimpse into the community feel that we hope to achieve at City Foundry.
A week into our visit, we left the city center to find an intimate restaurant off the beaten path in a neighborhood called Kita-ku. We couldn’t have been luckier as we stumbled upon a six-seat sushi restaurant owned and operated by Mr. Tomo, a seasoned chef. It was truly impressive to watch him prepare complex dishes in a kitchen no larger than an airplane restroom. We shared that we would soon be opening a Taiyaki shop in the U.S., and Tomo enthusiastically directed us to Doguyasuji, a shopping street with the best restaurant supply stores in Osaka. That’s where we found authentic Taiyaki irons not available in the U.S. and shipped a 200-pound set back to St. Louis. We can’t wait to use them at Mokyu Mokyu!
Our next destination was Kyoto, where we looked forward to trying a bite-size version of Taiyaki that’s slightly larger than a ¥500 coin (or U.S. gold dollar) at specialty shop Ochobo Taiyaki. This was the first place in Japan to use a croissant recipe and offer a wider range of fillings such as butter cream, chocolate, custard, maple, and pudding. The experience made our culinary minds race with ideas; we’d never thought of straying far from the classic pastry filling but were hooked and inspired.
It was then time to head back to Tokyo for the final—and most important—part of our trip. Ducking into a small alley, we entered the workroom of two Taiyaki chefs who graciously agreed to meet and share their time-tested family recipes. We all sat on the floor, shoes off, sipping fresh Matcha green tea. Together we mixed the ingredients, sifted the flour, and oiled the irons.
The chefs came from a long line of traditionalists but expressed a tendency to step outside the box and fill the pastry fish bellies with unique flavors such as fresh mango puree, banana slices, and mind-blowing savory cheese and melted butter. Their vision elevated and transformed the pastry. We bowed to them in humble thanks and promised to keep in touch with the progress of Mokyu Mokyu—but not before taking goofy pictures with props they brought to us.
Throughout our journey, we also indulged in a plethora of ice cream, because our version of Taiyaki will turn the fish pastry into an ice cream cone. Although not many pastry chefs serve ice cream with Taiyaki, the ones who do take the treat to the next level. Throughout our two-week journey, we indulged to the point that I had to purchase pants with a wider waistband. The one flavor that blew us away was sakura (cherry blossom), which we hope to recreate at City Foundry.
We look forward to honoring all of the wonderful people we met in Japan and my own Asian family history by sharing Taiyaki with St. Louis at Mokyu Mokyu.
