Tokara

I was so intrigued by Tokara, this local, hidden gem in Seattle that handmakes rotating kinds of wagashi, the traditional/​delicate handmade Japanese sweets that are typically used in tea ceremony. Their desserts are both aesthetically and tastefully pleasing… and are quite rare to find in normal day to day places we typically visit.
Tokara has an open-​house just once a month (but they do wholesale supplies to other Seattle bakeries, too), so make sure you look up their schedule, call/​email to pre-​order ahead of open-​house date and go pick up your sweets when they are open. Tokara is a very small place but has a zen-​ish calming feel to it. Most people just go there to pick up their sweet boxes (3 pieces/​box consisting of mochi, yokan and manju each for $ 12 a box). However, if you are lucky to arrive there early like I did when there aren’t so many people, you can have tea set for $ 7 (matcha+another type of wagashi) there as well. This was my first time getting sweets at Tokara. I also got a box for my SO’s grandparents who had stronger ties to Japan and don’t get to have these often anymore (because of their ages and because these confectionaries are hard to find here) and their eyes really lit up once they saw what the box contained :)).
I will check out their open house calendar and put it on my schedule and will definitely be stopping by Tokara in a future again.

Beautiful and delicate wagashi. The best you will find here, I think. I’m looking forward to gifting these to my grandmother who has not been able to travel to Japan for many years. We are so lucky to have Tokara-​san in Seattle!

Wow. Finding Tokara is yet one more thing why moving to Seattle has been the best decision of my life.
My immediate family resides in Chicago, but we have relatives in San Jose. We are obsessed with a manju shop in San Jose, and buy boxes at a time when we are in California.
Tokara is different in that they are only open to the public 1 Sunday a month, and you have to pre-​order. My husband and I were lucky enough to pass by the shop on Phinney Ave one day and immediately placed an order for two boxes.
Holy cow. This is the most amazing Japanese confectionary I have ever seen in my life. Not only are the wagashi beautiful, but they are also delicious.
We will be ordering every single month from now on. Tokara has taken the top spot in my book!

Pretty Japanese confections. I tried a couple and the textures of both were very unique and the flavours were delicate. Of the two I got, I would only get only one of them again, but I’d want to try more flavours for sure!

I feel extremely fortunate to have Tokara in my city. As a Japanese citizen living in the US, an authentic wagashi was something I had to travel 5,000miles for until I found Tokara.
Tokara san makes delicious, authentic Japanese wagashi and is so delicious. I no longer need to travel far to get my fix :) I mark my calendar every month to attend the open house. I can hardly wait until the next one :)

I had been by Tokara countless times. I always looked at the sign, which lists the next open house (typically on a Sunday) and kept on going by, making a mental note to come back. And so it went — over and over again.
My brother has a great appreciation for confections. When he visited in August, I decided to take him there to try the wagashi (Japanese sweets). We decided to try the open house. I called the week before to submit my order for 3 boxes. Each piece is $ 3.50 and each box holds 3 pieces. My total was a bit over $ 30.
When we arrived, there were a number of things for sale in front of the house. Also, a few artists were displaying their art for sale. As we walked up to the house, I somehow felt a bit serene and couldn’t figure out why. Well, when I got inside, all the seats were taken (only 3 or so because it was a small space) and a woman was in the middle of a ceremony. Somehow I was getting that vibe before I entered the house. I believe the cost was $ 5 but I’m not sure since I didn’t have any. The wagashi was presented on a stack of boxes so everyone coming could see them. Chef Tokara came in and out of the back to deliver the wagashi. She tested my Japanese and I’m sorry to say, it’s not very good. Fail!
I must say that it’s a crime to eat something so beautiful! Each piece is both delicate and intricate. Here’s what we got:
Gourd: Firm tofu-​like texture. Green tea flavor. Coarse rice flower, sea gelatin. Green tea, white bean paste inside.
Mimosa knoll: Rice sponge cake with three layers, colors of mimosa petals, egg, white bean, rice flour, green tea, purple potato.
Sunflower: Konashi and egg kinto with sprinkled poppy seed on top, white bean sugar, egg, flour, azuki, poppy seed.
My favorite was the mimosa knoll. The rice sponge cake was just sweet enough and the flavors were complex. The green tea and purple potato added variety that contributed to the overall experience. I enjoyed it very much but felt sad as I ate these bits of art. I wanted to keep looking at them! Overall, at $ 3.50 a piece, a bit spendy but a nice treat.

Tokara,
So my name is Kara. Obviously, as you can imagine, every time I walked by this adorable little house I felt like it was speaking to me. Writing me a letter, maybe. Immediately after moving to the neighborhood, I googled it and read about the Japanese confections that are only available to the public one Sunday every month. Typically this is the second Sunday of each month, but for some strange and wonderful reason, the sign that announces the next open house day read 1/​6, which just so happened to be the day I was walking by with me dog. AND the day I skipped a hike because I was too cold. I felt like it was a strange fate that I ended up loafing around my neighborhood on a Sunday that they were to open.
So I went home and busied myself for a few hours, all the while thinking about going there right at 1 pm. See, they suggest you reserve a box of confections, which I hadn’t done. I actually went to the website and tried, but couldn’t for the life of me figure how to. I’m not sure if that speaks to their UX design or my UX idiocy. Either way, I just decided to go right when they opened.
The place was adorable, and I really enjoyed talking to them, while sipping a sweet bean dish and drinking some green tea. I really had a genuinely wonderful conversation with the woman playing the shamisen, about what brought us both to Seattle from the East Coast and how we think it compares.
Now, I didn’t love the confections as much as I wish I did. Bean paste just isn’t my thing, unfortunately. But the experience of the visit was worth what i paid for those three treats. And to top it off, they said I was their first customer of 2013, and that it was good luck. I would say even if you are unfamiliar with Japanese confections, just go for the experience. It’s completely worth it.
Love,
Kara

Incredibly beautiful japanese confections! Sweetness in a pretty presentation. I ordered a box for my grandma’s 90^th birthday and while Japanese sweets may be considered an acquired taste, everyone enjoyed these little pieces of art work. You can feel the thoughtfulness that is put into every treat.

After a few years of walking past this enigmatic building and wondering what they did, I actually took the time to look up their website and discovered they are a boutique crafter of Japanese confections. A friend and I decided that with just a few days to go until their monthly open house, we needed to make a reservation and pre-​order the monthly assortment of treats.
Our visit was amazing! We arrived right as the doors had opened and not only picked up the desserts we had ordered but had a traditional macha tea ceremony as well. Following the beautiful tea service we carried our nibbles home to eat them. The flavors were delicate, intriguing and delightful.
We plan to make this a regular seasonal event!

It was my first visit to this place. Chef Tokara was very pleasant.
The sweets are work of art.
To see more pictures. check out at our past meetup at

Tokara has an open house on the second Sunday of each month. Unless you want to buy in bulk, your best option is to make a reservation for a box or two for the open house.
It’s $ 11 for a prepared box of three. The sweets are handcrafted and seasonal. It’s a good thing that I reserved a box, because she was already sold out by 3:15.
I took the box home, made a pot of genmai cha, and enjoyed the sweets. The flavors and textures were spot on — delicate and subtle. The treats were beautiful and it makes you appreciate even more than they are handmade. My only gripe was that it was a bit expensive, but I will probably be back.

Tokara makes the best manju on the west coast.

We just came back from a recent vacation to Japan, so I hopefully had the yardstick to measure this with. What I realized was how important presentation is for Japanese food, and the same applies to Japanese sweets as well, as the ingredient list is very limited.
So, Tokara earned my
— 5-​star on presentation and the fact that everything is hand-​made,
— minus a star for being too expensive, even for hand-​made
The taste is harder to discern, as it’s made with American ingredients so to me it doesn’t taste quite like what we had in Japan, though we’ve yet to find a more authentic Japanese sweet shop in Wasington State than Tokara. As this is a one-​person shop, the only explanation for such a high price is that it keeps things manageable.

The boss man lived in Japan for a few years during his military days, so he has an affinity for Japanese sweets. It is definitely an acquired taste, but once acquired you’re hard pressed in the states to find decent Japanese confections, but Tokara’s are as authentic as they come.
They are almost too pretty to eat, a bit on the pricey side, three small treats for about $ 10, and Tokara won’t let you peak inside your box until after you pay. But as other reviewers have stated, she does everything by hand. She’s an interesting woman, who doesn’t quite know how funny she is, because it’s unintentional, but you can see in the way she is that she is that her heart is in Japan: she dresses the part.
She does commercial work, selling a lot of her sweets and treats to Fresh Flours down the street, so you can probably find something there if it’s not Tourynase day, the 10^th of each month.

This was my second open house visit and I can’t say enough good things about Tokara. Each sweet is beautiful and delicious. It is obvious that Chef Tokara puts love in her work.
You can order boxes before the open house and then pick them up, which I highly recommend.
Such a fun treat, I will be in next month too!