So we're here at Taiyaki NYC
in New York City's Chinatown, and we're here
to try their famous Japanese soufflé pancakes.
So we've seen these everywhere, all over social media,
and we're super excited to give them a try for ourselves
to see if they live up to the hype.
Said to originate in Osaka, these Japanese delicacies
are blowing up on Instagram.
Soufflé pancakes gained popularity across social media
in 2016, two years after Shiawase no Pancake
and Gram Cafe started selling them in Osaka.
And today, the rest of the world
has finally started to catch on.
A lot of people are saying great things about it.
They're saying it's worth the wait.
They're saying it's really fluffy,
it's exactly what they had in Japan,
and it's just really rewarding to see something
that we've worked so hard on just become something tangible,
something that people appreciate.
Rose: Taiyaki NYC's Chinatown location
makes two different preparations of soufflé pancakes.
The first is the original preparation,
where the soufflé pancakes are topped
with butter, whipped cream, powdered sugar,
and a generous drizzle of maple syrup.
The second is the matcha glaze preparation
topped with a creamy green-tea-infused sauce.
Each kind is accompanied by a tiny taiyaki fish
filled with red-bean paste.
Wondering how a soufflé pancake gets its wobble?
It's all in the batter.
A meringue is made by whipping up egg whites
in a standing mixer on high speed.
When soft peaks begin to form
on the surface of the meringue,
it's done whipping and should hold its form.
The meringue is then gradually folded into the batter
until it's fully incorporated.
Because of the complexity in making the soufflé pancakes,
Taiyaki only sells them three days per week.
The reason why we don't serve it every single day
is because the pancakes are a very delicate process,
and there's many, many stages, many steps.
We make everything from scratch,
literally from down to the flour to the sugar,
and it's just a lot of labor, and it's a lot of work.
So that's why we want to keep it
within a specific time frame so it's a high-quality product
that people can get on weekends.
Rose: We asked a number of customers
where they first heard about Taiyaki's soufflé pancakes,
and their answers were nearly all the same.
Yeah, I see them on Instagram,
Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook.
Yeah, we find it in Instagram.
I follow Taiyaki on Instagram,
and they had all these fantastic fluffy pancakes,
and I was like, "Well, I gotta go try them."
Rose: So ultimately, I had to wonder,
are these soufflé pancakes made purely for Instagram,
or are they actually something worth experiencing?
Before I could come to a conclusion, I ordered myself
one of each preparation to give them a taste.
First up was the matcha preparation.
Whoa, oh, my goodness, this is something
like I've never had before.
It's really spongy on the inside.
It's super light and pillowy and airy,
and obviously with that meringue, it has a lot
of just amazing texture. It's just super light.
Next up, the original.
Because it's a little bit more of a simple preparation,
you're really tasting all of the flavors inside the pancake,
and it's a little bit less sweet than the matcha glaze
just because it doesn't have the sauce all over it.
So you can really taste the pancake's flavor,
which is just super airy, super light.
The butter obviously makes it really decadent
and delicious, adds a little bit of salt.
Mmm, super yummy.
The verdict: Yeah, they're pretty tasty.
Oh, it's so good.
Yeah it's really good.
So good.