Cool your body down while eating additive-free ANMITSU made from the finest ingredients! -The vegan gelatin specialty shop “Fukuo Shoten” with over 130 years of history

When going across the red brick-built ‘Mansei Bridge’ which is a 5-minute walk from Akihabara Station, you can reach “Kanda Suda-cho (神田須田町).” This area was a transportation hub connecting the Five Highways and had a fruit and vegetable market, so there were lots of merchants’ houses. The market had survived for 270 years and is said to have been filled with more than 350 stores in the late 1800s. Still now, you can find long-established stores reminiscent of ancient times with a history of over 100 years. From among them, this time, we’re going to introduce a vegan gelatin specialty shop “Fukuo Shoten (福尾商店)” to visit when you want to take a break while strolling around this area.

“Fukuo Shoten” whose signboard and shop curtain make us feel a very old-town atmosphere. It makes fancy agar-agar jelly (Kanten, 寒天) in their traditional way inherited from its founding in 1886. They not only carefully select ingredients but also are particular about producing menus without using any food additives. Agar-agar jelly, made with several types of luxury agars from Izu in Shizuoka prefecture, has a rich flavor and chewy texture. It’s so popular that some fans come all the way from Hokkaido.

Originally it was a take-out specialty shop, but now there is an eat-in space in the shop. The interior, which is based on white and produces the warmth of wood, creates a cozy and Japanese ambiance.

If you feel like you have much heat stored in your body during sightseeing, why not cool it off by eating the popular menu ‘ANMITSU (あんみつ)’? It is a traditional Japanese dessert and served with rice cake balls and smooth sweet bean paste, fruits such as mandarin, pine and cherry and more. Moreover, the followings are unique to Fukuo Shoten: ‘Kuromitsu,’ sweet black syrup, was made through trial and error to bring out agar’s flavor, smooth sweet bean paste made from red peas was boiled while removing crumbled ones and their skins by their hands, etc. It’s also attractive that all of them don’t use any food additives. Besides, we recommend those who are cutting down on sweets because agar-agar jelly is low in calories but rich in dietary fiber.
By the way, they offer other various menus such as plum-flavored agar-agar jelly and gelidium jelly (Tokoroten), sweet red bean soup, Japanese sweets made of arrowroot starch (Kuzumochi) or from bracken starch (Warabimochi). It might be good to share different sweets with your friends.