Looking for a fun dessert place in Sydney? Toyatento is a popular Asian dessert cafe known for its soy-based sweets and creative treats. The menu features silky tofu pudding made fresh every few hours, stretchy warabi mochi, shaved ice desserts, tang yuan and sweet soy milk drinks. Many desserts are vegan-friendly and packed with interesting textures like chewy mochi, purple sticky rice and black sesame fillings.
It's a Saturday night when Sophia and I arrive to Toyatento, an Asian dessert cafe after a slightly disappointing meal elsewhere. Rather than going home dissatisfied, we wanted to right the night so we headed to Toyatento, a place I had driven past many times before and always wanted to go in.
It's hard to find a park in this high rise residential part of Waterloo so we park at East Village shopping centre and walk back to it. In that time, Toyatento has become very busy and all of the tables are taken. Not to worry, the friendly staff pass us a menu and tell us that it will be 1 minute wait while they clean a table that has just left.
The menu is full of vegan friendly desserts as they use soy milk instead of dairy. In fact their tagline is "The Joy of Soy". The menu has a range of Asian style desserts like sweet soups, tofu puddings, mochi and flavoured soy milks. Ordering and paying is done at the counter and the staff are friendly and helpful.
There is one special on this week (sadly no longer available Dear Reader) which is an intriguing hot and cold dessert made with shaved ice, warm soy milk and sea moss and three plump black sesame tangyuan or mochi balls filled with sweet black sesame filling and a small bowl of black sesame and sugar crunch on the side. The sea moss is like a clear noodle doesn't really have much of a flavour to it so it's just really there for texture and nutrients. The soy milk and sea moss aren't overly sweet at all, the sweetness lies in the black sesame balls which are so deliciously moreish. And as it's a warm night I really enjoy the hot and cold sensation of the soup.
The small, inexpensive sanonto warabi mochi with Japanese sanonto (soft, light-brown Japanese cane sugar) syrup and kinako (roasted soy bean) powder is a favourite for both of us. Not just for the stretchy fern root powder mochi but that moreish sweetness from the syrup and nutty kinako powder.
I'm a big warabi mochi fan so even though Sophia doesn't like matcha, we order this. It's a matcha warabi mochi made with Uji matcha powder with tiny pearls of mochi, sweetened red beans, caramelised sugar syrup and kinako powder. This has everything that I want in a dessert and really comes together when you get a bit of everything on your fork. It does come with a little tool to cut the warabimochi up but it's so stretchy that the tool doesn't work as well as it does with other mochi.
All of the tofu is made in house using organic Australian soybeans and is made fresh every 4 hours. The soy or tofu pudding is one of the things they are known for so we tried the one with ginger syrup (knowing that we'd take leftovers home as Mr NQN adores tofu pudding). This comes with two toppings of your choice - they recommend the sweet potato mochi balls and the black sesame mochi. And the tofu pudding is silky soft with a breakaway meltingly soft texture and it comes with a generous amount of ginger syrup. This is nice although I think I was more preoccupied with the warabi mochi and the shaved ice dessert below.
Tofu is in a lot of their desserts and that includes the coconut shaved ice with a bowl of coconut shaved ice that hides a bottom layer of purple sticky rice, finely diced water chestnuts, soft tofu pudding and sweet longans and a finishing touch of salt. The salt makes this moreish and I only wish they had a few more longans as the longans are the sweet component to this dish.
So tell me Dear Reader, do you enjoy Asian desserts like mochi and shaved ice or do you usually prefer Western style desserts?
This meal was independently paid for.
Toyatento
5 Sam Sing St, Waterloo NSW 2017
Monday & Tuesday closed
Wednesday & Thursday 5–10:30 pm
Friday to Sunday 3–10:30 pm
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