Sakura flower petal soda, other cherry blossom treats have us ready to hurry to Japan’s Pronto cafes

Sakura shares space in the cup with another seasonal flower flavor.

While Starbucks shows off its cherry blossom menu well before the flowers start to bloom, many other cafes in Japan wait until we’re closer to the actual start of sakura season before revealing their springtime drinks and desserts. The Pronto cafe chain is ready to pull back the curtain, though, and it’s about to bring us three new sweet sakura sipping and snacking options.

Starting things off is the Sakura Milk Tea (649 yen [US$4.40]), which has an unsweetened black tea base. Things quickly get fancy from there, though, with the addition of a sweet-and-salty sakura sauce, which combines with the creamy milk for a rich (and pink) mixture, topped with a swirl of whipped cream and sprinkled with sakura hard candy and sakura chocolate bits for a touch of pleasantly crunchy texture.

If you’re craving something lighter and fizzier, the Sakura Ume Squash [from 539 yen] is two floral themes in one, and no, it doesn’t taste like gourd vegetables. In Japan, “lemon squash” refers to clear, refreshing soda (as opposed to heavier, darker colas like Coke or Pepsi). The Sakura Ume Squash combines the tart flavor of ume, Japanese plum (whose trees’ flowers mostly bloom in February) with the refreshing sweetness of sakura, and even looks to have a few sakura petals floating in the cup for extra atmosphere.

And last, the Sakura Mont Blanc (594 yen) also takes a flexible approach to cafe-related linguistics. Usually, Mont Blanc is a dessert made of candied chestnut cream, served in long, spaghetti-shaped strips. The Sakura Mony Blanc, though, is actually a slice of matcha green tea sponge cake topped with whipped cream, and then the whipped cream is topped with a mixture of white anko (sweet bean paste) and sakura cream. It doesn’t appear to contain any chestnut, but it does appear to be very, very delicious.

The entire lineup goes on sale February 27 for a limited, unspecified time.

Source, images: PR Times
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