Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2009

Courtesy of Sunny Side Up

With all the fuss made about calories, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, resistant starch, lycopene, polyphenol and the like, you could almost forget that eating has the potential to be enjoyable. Our ancestors didn’t get into a tizz over nutritional content and carb counts—they didn’t even know what they were. And while such ignorance can be damaging in itself, all this modern paranoia and self-flagellation over what we ingest hasn’t made us any wiser or happier. It certainly hasn’t made us any thinner.

We were reminded of all this on a recent visit to Soys Cafe, a new-ish Azabu-Juban eatery that aims to reacquaint people with the joy of dining. Sorry, did I say “joy”? I meant “soy.” It’s brought to us by Tofu Moritaya, a Fukuoka-based company that seems to devote a lot more time to creating bean-based cosmetics than actual foodstuffs. The PR blurb hammers on about health, beauty and nature, but Soys Cafe shouldn’t be confused with vegetarian, macrobiotic, organic or whole food restaurants. All of those places make a genuine effort to provide something a bit less artificial than the norm, and will generally give you a good feed.

At Soys Cafe, they seem to be more concerned with giving you a good intake. This is a restaurant that comes with the tagline “isoflavone & collagen,” setting the tone for a culinary experience in which gastronomic pleasure ranks low on the list of priorities.

Courtesy of Sunny Side Up

The lunchtime choices on our visit included sautéed mackerel with two petite cubes of egg and tofu (¥950), a vegetarian plate of ratatouille and hijiki salad (¥850) and a tofu hamburger that turned out to have meat in it (¥850). The portions were consistently weedy, which will come as a relief if you were only supposed to have a Slim-Fast shake for lunch. We followed up with soy cheesecake and sweet potato tart (¥200 each); both had a pleasant texture but were curiously bland.

The drink menu is soy-heavy, in flavor as well as selection. The faint traces of tea in the “green silk” matcha latte (small ¥350, tall ¥400) were overpowered by the nuttiness of the soy milk. It was, admittedly, much less vile than its Starbucks counterpart. An extra ¥100 gets your drink a “collagen boost”—a little creepy, that—while a whole section of the menu is devoted to “Special Collagen Drinks.” We tried the white vinegar milk (¥450), which was a lot less bizarre than it sounded, tasting a bit like yogurt.

Courtesy of Sunny Side Up

It isn’t hard to imagine Soys Cafe proving popular with the more figure-obsessed end of the ladies-who-lunch demographic. You know the sort: people whose first reaction on encountering any food is to ask how fat it will make them or whether it helps reduce wrinkles. If you just want to know how it tastes, though, this place probably isn’t for you.