The final surprise under everything is the rice or slices of coffee-flavoured sponge cake with whipped cream in between. The bowl is not cake. Please do not eat the bowl. Perfecting the illusion took Sugimoto, who has worked as a pastry chef for the last seven years, and his colleagues a month. "We were quite particular about the presentation and added the white streaks on the fatty tuna and salmon using milk jelly," said Sugimoto, 25. The group even went as far as adding mundane details—the green "wasabi" paste is made of fresh cream, and the cake comes with a little fish-shaped bottle of soy sauce that sometimes accompanies seafood bowls. Rest assured, this one is safe to drizzle over the cake. It's filled with "kuromitsu" (brown sugar syrup) instead of soy sauce. Since the midst of the pandemic in 2022, the shop has experimented with making rice bowl cakes. Past hits include "katsu" (deep-fried pork cutlet) and "unagi" eel bowls. The less structured mapo tofu with cubed tofu and minced meat was another undertaking.