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Japan Today
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Donuts with seaweed and soy sauce: Is Japan's Mister Donut idea too Japanese for its own good?
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Mister Donut is the Japanese donut chain. Though it originally started out in the U.S., it's risen to greater success in Japan than it ever did in its home country, and was pretty much Japan's only high-profile donut chain for several decades. Even now, with Krispy Kreme and Randy's Donuts having opened locations in Japan, there's still a perception that Mister Donut is the one that's really tapped into Japanese sweets fans' tastes. But a recent suggestion from Mister Donut had even us thinking that maybe it had gotten a little too Japanese. First, let's set the stage/dessert table. On its official website, Mister Donut has a list of what it calls 'at-home donut arrangements.' They're basically mini recipes for ways to spruce up our Mister Donut treats once you get them home, things like cutting an Old Fashioned into slices and serving it in a dish with ice cream as a donut parfait, or adding whipped cream and banana slices to turn your donut into a fancy high-tea kind of snack. And then there's this suggestion. Yes, that's a Mister Donut donut wrapped in seaweed. Why? Because this is their arrangement for Pon de Isobemaki, which will require some quick linguistic side dishes to explain. First, Pon de Ring is Mister Donut's most popular donut, a ring made up of bite-sized spheres of dough. ▼ You could say that the Pon de Ring is a chain of donut holes that forms a donut with a single non-donut-hole hole in its center, if that sort of word wrangling doesn't make smoke come out of your ears. Meanwhile isobemaki is a traditional Japanese dish in which a mochi rice cake is grilled, dipped in dashi soy sauce (soy sauce with bonito stock), and wrapped in a sheet of dried seaweed (or nori, as it's called in Japanese), It's a not entirely uncommon misconception that Pon de Ring is made with mochi flour, since they're chewier than other donuts. However, this extra chewiness actually comes from tapioca powder that's mixed into the dough. There's no mochi in Pon de Ring, which means there's also no culinary precedent for dipping a Pon de Ring in soy sauce and then wrapping it in some crisp seaweed. Honestly, it sounds like the sort of insane idea you'd get if you were looking for a way to justify eating some dessert when you haven't even had dinner yet. If the suggestion was coming from anywhere else, we'd be tempted to dismiss it immediately, but this recipe is straight from Mister Donut themselves, and it wouldn't be in their interest to present us with a way to make one of their products taste worse, right? So we headed out to our local branch, though still with our hearts full of more confusion than hope, to pick up a Pon de Ring and give this highly unorthodox idea a try. Almost immediately, we ran into a hiccup, because Mister Donut sells multiple kinds of Pon de Ring, At the most basic stage of division, there's the glazed Pon de Ring and the non-glazed Pon de Ring Plain. However, since Mister Donut's Pon de Isobemaki recipe just says to use a 'Pon de Ring,' we went with the style simply called Pon de Ring, the glazed version. The first step of the recipe is to heat the Pon de Ring in the microwave for 15 seconds. Next, dip the donut in dashi soy sauce, making sure to get the condiment on both sides. Mister Donut's recipe calls for roughly 30 milliliters (approximately one ounce) of sauce, but you probably don't really need to be too precise with the measurement. We honestly felt a little guilty doing this to one of the absolute all-stars of the Japanese sweets scene. Sure, we had Mister Donut's explicit permission to do so, but if a parent said 'Go ahead, slap my kid in the face,' that still wouldn't make it something we could do without it weighing heavily on our conscience. Once the dipping is done, grab a sheet of nori and wrap the donut in it. Its time in the microwave had made our Pon de Ring a little droopy in consistency, so we had to use a delicate touch to make sure we were gripping tightly enough so that it wouldn't slide free from its seaweed sheath, but not so tightly as to smoosh our sweets. Then we lifted the Pon de Osobemaki up, took a bite, and… …were startled by how delicious it is, For as bizarre as the concept had sounded, there's very little in the way of distracting drama once you taste it. The sweet and salty notes of the donut, glaze, and soy sauce prove that they can in fact play very nicely together, and while the texture of the nori is a bit discordant, its slightly salty contribution to the flavor profile makes for nice clean finish. Despite its name, the Pon de Isobemaki actually reminded us more of another traditional Japanese food: mitarashi dango. These dumplings, which actually are made from mochi, are brushed with a glaze made from sugar, mirin (sweet cooking sake), and soy sauce, producing a flavor that dances gracefully on the sweet-savory line. When the glaze on the standard Pon de Ring meets soy sauce, it creates a similar sensation, and that's probably why Mister Donut's recipe ostensibly wants you to use the glazed version of the donut. Getting back to isobemaki itself, though, the flavor tends to be different depending on whether you eat it in the Tokyo or Osaka area, since Osaka favors a sweeter-tasting soy sauce than east Japan does. That has us thinking that maybe the non-glazed Pon de Ring Plain has potential with the isobemaki-style treatment too, so we might have to experiment with that as well, provided that we can resist the urge to just repeat the very satisfying as-is recipe from Mister Donut. Reference: Mister Donut Insert images: SoraNews24, Mister Donut Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Mister Donut's new Kyoto roasted green tea donut is a mess…in the best possible way -- Japan's new Mister Donut matcha donuts have so much green tea flavor one has to use the hole -- Mister Donut, Kyoto tea merchant create new line of treats, with one that's two desserts in one External Link © SoraNews24
SoraNews24
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- SoraNews24
Donuts with seaweed and soy sauce — Is Japan's Mister Donut idea too Japanese for its own good?
Traditional mochi treatment puts a spin on the Pon de Ring, but is it an unrecoverable tailspin? Mister Donut is the Japanese donut chain. Though it originally started out in the U.S., it's risen to greater success in Japan than it ever did in its home country, and was pretty much Japan's only high-profile donut chain for several decades. Even now, with Krispy Kreme and Randy's Donuts having opened locations in Japan, there's still a perception that Mister Donut is the one that's really tapped into Japanese sweets fans' tastes. But a recent suggestion from Mister Donut had even us thinking that maybe it had gotten a little too Japanese. First, let's set the stage/dessert table. On its official website, Mister Donut has a list of what it calls 'at-home donut arrangements.' They're basically mini recipes for ways to spruce up our Mister Donut treats once you get them home, things like cutting an Old Fashioned into slices and serving it in a dish with ice cream as a donut parfait, or adding whipped cream and banana slices to turn your donut into a fancy high-tea kind of snack. And then there's this suggestion. Yes, that's a Mister Donut donut wrapped in seaweed. Why? Because this is their arrangement for Pon de Isobemaki, which will require some quick linguistic side dishes to explain. First, Pon de Ring is Mister Donut's most popular donut, a ring made up of bite-sized spheres of dough. ▼ You could say that the Pon de Ring is a chain of donut holes that forms a donut with a single non-donut-hole hole in its center, if that sort of word wrangling doesn't make smoke come out of your ears. Meanwhile isobemaki is a traditional Japanese dish in which a mochi rice cake is grilled, dipped in dashi soy sauce (soy sauce with bonito stock), and wrapped in a sheet of dried seaweed (or nori, as it's called in Japanese), It's a not entirely uncommon misconception that Pon de Ring is made with mochi flour, since they're chewier than other donuts. However, this extra chewiness actually comes from tapioca powder that's mixed into the dough. There's no mochi in Pon de Ring, which means there's also no culinary precedent for dipping a Pon de Ring in soy sauce and then wrapping it in some crisp seaweed. Honestly, it sounds like the sort of insane idea you'd get if you were looking for a way to justify eating some dessert when you haven't even had dinner yet. If the suggestion was coming from anywhere else, we'd be tempted to dismiss it immediately, but this recipe is straight from Mister Donut themselves, and it wouldn't be in their interest to present us with a way to make one of their products taste worse, right? So we headed out to our local branch, though still with our hearts full of more confusion than hope, to pick up a Pon de Ring and give this highly unorthodox idea a try. Almost immediately, we ran into a hiccup, because Mister Donut sells multiple kinds of Pon de Ring, At the most basic stage of division, there's the glazed Pon de Ring and the non-glazed Pon de Ring Plain. However, since Mister Donut's Pon de Isobemaki recipe just says to use a 'Pon de Ring,' we went with the style simply called Pon de Ring, the glazed version. The first step of the recipe is to heat the Pon de Ring in the microwave for 15 seconds. Next, dip the donut in dashi soy sauce, making sure to get the condiment on both sides. Mister Donut's recipe calls for roughly 30 milliliters (approximately one ounce) of sauce, but you probably don't really need to be too precise with the measurement. We honestly felt a little guilty doing this to one of the absolute all-stars of the Japanese sweets scene. Sure, we had Mister Donut's explicit permission to do so, but if a parent said 'Go ahead, slap my kid in the face,' that still wouldn't make it something we could do without it weighing heavily on our conscience. Once the dipping is done, grab a sheet of nori and wrap the donut in it. Its time in the microwave had made our Pon de Ring a little droopy in consistency, so we had to use a delicate touch to make sure we were gripping tightly enough so that it wouldn't slide free from its seaweed sheath, but not so tightly as to smoosh our sweets. Then we lifted the Pon de Osobemaki up, took a bite, and… …were startled by how delicious it is! For as bizarre as the concept had sounded, there's very little in the way of distracting drama once you taste it. The sweet and salty notes of the donut, glaze, and soy sauce prove that they can in fact play very nicely together, and while the texture of the nori is a bit discordant, its slightly salty contribution to the flavor profile makes for nice clean finish. Despite its name, the Pon de Isobemaki actually reminded us more of another traditional Japanese food: mitarashi dango. These dumplings, which actually are made from mochi, are brushed with a glaze made from sugar, mirin (sweet cooking sake), and soy sauce, producing a flavor that dances gracefully on the sweet-savory line. When the glaze on the standard Pon de Ring meets soy sauce, it creates a similar sensation, and that's probably why Mister Donut's recipe ostensibly wants you to use the glazed version of the donut. Getting back to isobemaki itself, though, the flavor tends to be different depending on whether you eat it in the Tokyo or Osaka area, since Osaka favors a sweeter-tasting soy sauce than east Japan does. That has us thinking that maybe the non-glazed Pon de Ring Plain has potential with the isobemaki-style treatment too, so we might have to experiment with that as well, provided that we can resist the urge to just repeat the very satisfying as-is recipe from Mister Donut. Reference: Mister Donut Top image: SoraNews24 Insert images: SoraNews24, Mister Donut ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! [ Read in Japanese ]
SoraNews24
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- SoraNews24
Japan's Mister Donut teams up with Disney for first time for Mickey and Minnie Sweets
♪M-I-S, T-E-R, D-O-N-U-T♪ In the vast majority of circumstances, having mice in your restaurant would be nothing to smile about, and the sort of news that most companies would want to keep as tight a lid on as possible. However, there's a rare exception on the way for Japan's leading donut chain, Mister Donut, which not only is intentionally inviting in a pair of mouse visitors, but is telling everyone about it. That's because while they're technically rodents, Mickey Mouse and gal-pal Minnie's status as beloved animated characters means they don't present any sort of hygiene issue for Mister Donut, and are instead a cause for celebration as the chain gears up for its first-ever collaboration with Disney. Slated on the opposite side of the seasonal cycle as Mister Donut's annual winter Pokémon donuts, the Disney sweets will be going on sale in midsummer. Details are currently scarce, but a preview photo of the Mickey donut looks like a three-part treat, with a chocolate-coated donut in the center and a pair of 'ears' up top, though it's hard to see if these are separate spheres served as part of a set or if they're connected to the donut in a sort of hybrid of a standard donut and Mister Donut's popular Pon de Ring confectionaries, which are rings made of donut dough orbs. Mickey's shorts, meanwhile, bear resemblance to Mister Donut's Poké Ball donut which was dusted with strawberry sugar, so we might be seeing/tasting that flavor again here. Mister Donut is also promising a Minnie Mouse donut, though with no preview images of it yet released it's a mystery as to whether it'll simple be a cosmetic variant of the Mickey one or its own thing entirely. Either way, the Disney donuts come in special Disney/Mister Donut packaging and will be available for a limited time starting in early July, assuming they don't experience any non-cuteness-related delays like the chain's original Pikachu donuts did. Source, images: PR Times ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Tatler Asia
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
A food lover's guide to Chiba, Japan
Sugitaya Above Sugitaya specialises in Iekei-style ramen with rich shoyu broth that originates in Yokohama Ranked an impressive 148 out of over 4,000 restaurants in Chiba, Sugitaya is a mid-range ramen shop specialising in Iekei-style ramen that originates in Yokohama, with its rich shoyu broth, thick straight noodles and toppings such as pork chashu, nori seaweed and spinach. With its casual, authentic atmosphere, Sugitaya is a favourite among both locals and visitors–which would explain why the queues during peak hours are not uncommon. Don't miss: What goes into delicious ramen, according to Chihiro Miyazaki of the newly opened Ramen Minamo Gyukatsu Kyoto Katsugyu Above Deep-fried beef and salmon cutlets served rare and diners may cook them to their preferred doneness For both locals and visitors seeking something beyond the ordinary, Gyukatsu Kyoto Katsugyu specialises in deep-fried beef cutlets (gyukatsu) served rare, which originated during the Meiji era and gained popularity in Tokyo during the mid-2010s. Available in various cuts and grades of beef, and presented as set meals with rice, miso soup, shredded cabbage and dipping sauces, diners complete the cooking process to their preferred doneness using personal hot stones at the table. Read more: 5 things to know about MiGyeongSan Hanwoo beef, which is now available in Malaysia Mister Donut Above A delectable selection of doughnuts to savour at Mister Donut Although Mister Donut operates internationally, it is also Japan's most recognised doughnut chain with a distinctive identity tailored to local preferences. While the signature Pon de Ring–a chewy, mochi-like doughnut with a unique shape and texture–is a must-try, classic options such as glazed doughnuts, French crullers and seasonal limited-edition flavours are still favourite go-to's for a quick treat or relaxed break from sightseeing. See also: 5 things you might not know about doughnuts Kintoun Above Kintoun is famous for its chicken paitan (white broth) ramen Located in the MIO shopping complex near Chibachuo Station, Kintoun has become a standout ramen destination since its opening in 2021 due to its specialised chicken paitan (white broth) ramen–an additive-free, creamy soup often likened to corn potage. Beyond ramen, the menu includes horse meat dishes and donburi (rice bowls)–all available in a cosy establishment with counter seating that accommodates both solo diners and families. Don't miss: The most underrated Malaysian dishes, according to chefs Hanamaru Udon Above Sanuki-style udon noodles at Hanamaru Udon This popular fast-food chain offers Sanuki-style udon noodles in a convenient, cafeteria-style setting, where customers order at the counter from a menu that includes kake udon (plain broth), tempura udon and curry udon. Also available are side dishes such as tempura and rice balls to round out a hearty, wholesome meal packed with flavours. Read more: 10 must-try Asian noodles for armchair travellers TakoTako Sakaechyo Above TakoTako uses Osaka-imported flour to create batter that is crisp on the outside and creamy within The bold red signage of this little takoyaki stall tucked in the rather barren street corner in Chiba definitely captures the attention of passers-by. Located a 10-minute walk from JR Chiba Station, TakoTako Sakaechyo serves authentic Osaka-style takoyaki (octopus balls), using flour imported from Osaka to create batter that is crisp on the outside and creamy within. A highlight is the Negi-mori takoyaki, generously topped with Kyoto Kujo green onions. Other available options range from sauce to ponzu and cheese, and in portions of six, eight or 15 pieces–a popular choice for takeaway or a casual snack on the go. See also: Kanpai! Read why Japan is the newest 'it' region for wines Tonkatsu Kimizuka Above Kimizuka specialises in Japan's beloved tonkatsu curry rice Located above a Daily Yamazaki konbini store, this unassuming tonkatsu restaurant specialises in Japan's beloved tonkatsu curry–a combination of savoury Japanese curry and a crisp, deep-fried pork cutlet. Amidst a cosy atmosphere and attentive service, Kimizuka also serves sashimi, grilled fish, tempura, and a rotating selection of rice and noodle dishes with an emphasis on fresh, high-quality ingredients. Don't miss: These are the 6 best curry restaurants in Tokyo, according to Tabelog mamenakano Above A simple, refined long black to keep you fuelled throughout the day mamenakano is a specialty coffee stand located just steps from JR Chiba Station's North Exit, where owner Kei Nakano serves on-site or takeaway quality drip coffee in a minimalist space of concrete and wood. Coffee lovers looking for baked pies to go with mamenakano's signature coffee may visit the shops Pie & Coffee outlet in Makuhari–a half-an-hour's train ride away, but one thing is for certain for both outlets: the emphasis is on simple flavours, local ingredients and clean design–making it a standout for lovers of refined coffee culture. NOW READ Inside 7 romantically designed restaurants around the world Understanding alkaline noodles, a taste that time almost forgot 10 new restaurants, cafés, and bars in Malaysia to visit in May 2025 Credits
