Nara's TENKARA GELATO combines ingredients grown in Tenkawa Village with the chef's sensibility

Individually run specialty shops are booming all over Japan. Locally-sourced ingredients directly contribute to the unique character of the ice cream. The backgrounds of the makers are as diverse as the ice creams themselves. Why do they make each type of ice cream? Here are the stories of the people who make them.

photo: Kiyoshi Nishioka / text: Mako Yamato / edit: Mutsumi Hidaka

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TENKARA GELATO

Ingredients grown in Tenkawa Village are combined with the chef's sensibility

The owner, Toshiharu Sunayama, is a chef who has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in France. In 2023, he moved to Tenkawa Village, where his wife, Ayako Hatanaka, a sushi chef, lives, in order to open an auberge.

The gelato that Toshiharu created, inspired by Ayako's love for his hometown, has a deep flavor that is born from the sensibility of a chef. For example, the popular flavor "Firewood Milk" is made by smoking milk using thinned wood, a material unique to this area where forestry is thriving, as firewood. Chocolate made with ambrosia fruit, an ingredient in the folk medicine "Daranisuke," which has been passed down since the Asuka period, leaves a lingering aftertaste with a refreshing taste unlike any other.

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