Everytime I go to Asia I crave for the Asian sweet stuff which can hardly be found here in the Netherlands. Do you like drinks or food with matcha, yuzu, red beans or sesame paste? Then you know what I mean. Recently you can find these flavours more and more in our little country. When I heard about the café and cake shop Round&Round in my hometown Rotterdam, I knew I wanted to try it out at once. Now I have already been there a couple of times! Curious about what they have? Read more about it below.
Round&Round is owned by the two Chinese girls Bing and Chao who wanted to bring something new and inspiring to our little country in the form of cute and creative cakes. When you enter their shop you see it is a cosy little place which has a Japanese feel to it. At the counter you can see they have different kind of cake rolls in different flavours, like matcha, charcoal, coffee, cacao or yuzu. They also have different kinds of cakes. Some are limited, like the cherry flower yoghurt cheese cake I had tasted.
I thought they only had cakes, but when I came for lunch one day I saw they also had different kind of Japanese pancakes. You could see them displayed in their cute self-drawn menu. I really love matcha, so I chose the pancake with homemade matcha sauce and strawberry, while my friend took the one with farm butter and local honey. They also had a lot of matcha drinks. I decided to go for the matcha latte with red beans, my two favourite flavours, and my friend choose ice matcha latte.
As you can see in the picture you get three thick pancakes on top of each other. The mine got strawberry and matcha in between, while my friend had butter and honey between her pancakes. Don’t eat anything before this! It is quite filling. I liked the combination of the fluffy pancake with the sweet strawberry and the matcha taste. Our drinks were also heavenly! The combination of matcha and red beans is just perfect. There are also real pieces of red beans in the matcha latte. Some people might find that strange, but for me it makes it more authentic.
I attend two high teas. One is the normal one and the other is the light version. As a starter we got yuzu tea with orange peel. Then we could choose what tea we wanted. They had loose tea from the Biological teashop InfitiTea. The tea was put in little boxes where you could smell them and also readwhat health reasons each tea has. They also let us all choose one piece of cake roll to add to the high tea. As you can see we got so many different things, like matcha pudding, dorayaki pancakes, crackers, different cakes, cookies and chocolate. It was surprising to have so much different things to try out. And especially lots of matcha stuff!
If you like sweet stuff with an Asian twist to it, then Round&Round is the place to be for you. Besides hanging around for a drink or bite, you can also follow one of their workshops, like the Japanese matcha ceremony workshop. You can also take home cakes or order a handmade birthday cake. If you go to Round&Round you should really try out there matcha products. You can really taste that that is their speciality. I can’t wait to go there again!
Yum is all I can say. I would love to travel everywhere just to try all the foods.. I think that’s the best thing about traveling!!
Wow! I didn’t know this place. The high tea (both of them) looks delicious. I’m gonna go there soon.
Haven’t you try the all matcha high tea yet? Want to go and try that one together? Maybe other foodbloggers want to join as well.
Most of my posts are for my readers. Today I want to post something for my author friends, or those of you who have a dream but keep hearing that what you want to achieve isn’t possible. There are so many posts out there about what people are doing wrong. How they’re marketing wrong, writing wrong, interacting on social media wrong… No wonder so many creatives pack it in, thinking they’ll never get anything right. So here I am to tell you what you are doing right.
~ You are writing! Or drawing, painting, whatever your passion is, if you are making time in your life to do it, you have completed the most important step. Congratulations!
~ You love what you are doing enough to keep practicing your craft, and to keep trying no matter what.
~ You understand that sometimes, life gets in the way. It’s all good and well to have dreams of being a full time author etc, but that doesn’t happen overnight. We still need to pay the bills, feed our families and keep our houses clean. As long as you get back to what you love the next chance you get, you’re on the right track.
~ You believe in yourself. As a creative person we always have doubts, but deep down we have enough self-belief to keep at it.
~ You don’t get social media and marketing, but you’re trying anyway. How else are you going to learn?
~ You’re reaching out to people who have the same passions as you. (Shout out to my BB’s!) These people will be your best friends in those times of doubt, or when you can’t work out how to use Twitter.
So if you are doing these things, I think you have what you need to reach your goals whatever they may be. As long as you have Passion, Self-Belief, Learning and Patience, you’ll achieve your dreams.