Daimaru Umeda's Depachika Reborn: The New B1 Sweets Zone and Eat-In Dango

The four shops in the new dekitate sweets zone

Phase 1 is built around four shops, all chosen for their ability to produce food on-site rather than just sell pre-packaged goods. The line-up, confirmed by the official Daimaru Matsuzakaya press release, is:

• CHIHIRO the FINANCIER — a new format from the Osaka financier specialist Chihiro Gashi-ten, baking financiers daily with cultured butter, French flour, and Marcona almonds from Spain, with no baking powder
• & EARL GREY — the first Osaka outlet of the Earl Grey specialist, with nine tea-leaf variants including black, green, hojicha, jasmine, and rooibos Earl Greys, plus tea gelato and soft-serve
• THE KAEN — the first Umeda outlet of the Kuromon-market high-end fruit shop with 70 years of history, serving one-handed fruit parfaits, fruit juices, roll cakes, and strawberry daifuku in an eat-in space
• Kihassu Sohonten — a renewed version of the existing mitarashi-dango shop, now with an eat-in counter where you can watch the dango being grilled to order

The structural shift is the live production. The previous B1 food floor sold a lot of packaged gift sweets. The new zone is designed around watching the food being made, then eating it on the spot. The Chihiro financier counter bakes throughout the day. The Earl Grey counter pours its own tea-flavoured gelato. The Kihassu counter grills dango to order. THE KAEN has a sit-down eat-in space for parfaits. None of this requires a restaurant reservation or a long sit-down, which is what makes it a daily-use proposition rather than a special-occasion one.

The Earl Grey gelato counter, in detail

The and EARL GREY counter is the one most visitors will stop at longest. The signature line is the Kaoru Tea Gelato, 12 varieties at 810 yen each, made by concentrating teas from around the world and pairing them as a gelato. The gelato itself is the vehicle for the tea, not the other way around. The tea range runs across black tea, green tea, hojicha, jasmine, and rooibos Earl Greys, plus a special opening-edition Awa Ban Cha Earl Grey made with lactic-fermented Tokushima tea.

The soft-serve line is the second reason to stop. Two variants sit at 648 yen each. The Earl Grey Rich Milk is described by the shop as a drinkable royal milk tea, with Calpis cultured butter milk and bergamot oil finished with a meringue. The Butterfly Pea Earl Grey is a deep-blue soft-serve made with anthocyanin-rich butterfly pea tea, served with mint meringue. The shop also bakes scones fresh, with a Hawaiian scone line using Hokkaido cream cheese and fruit, and an English scone line with Earl Grey, lemon tea, and rose tea variants. Scones start at 378 yen, Hawaiian scones at 432 yen.

The mitarashi-dango eat-in counter at Kihassu

The Kihassu Sohonten renewal is the one that most changes the experience. The shop was already on B1, but the renewal added an eat-in counter where the dango is grilled to order. Kihassu's mitarashi dango is the queue-item: a rice-and-mochi-flour dango in a cylindrical tawara shape, grilled over direct flame after the order is placed, then dipped in a tare made from Hokkaido Akkeshi kombu, Kagawa tamari soy sauce, and white sugar. The cylindrical shape is deliberate, because it holds more tare and develops a stronger char.

The detail that regulars care about is the char level. The counter lets you choose between light char, normal char, and heavy char. The default in most dango shops is set, but here the choice is yours. Single sticks are available for walk-and-eat, and five-stick boxes are sold as gifts. The shop also sells sake-manju, jumbo kintsuba, hanabota-mochi, and gift-weight wagashi including rikishi-mochi and chestnut-manju, so the eat-in counter is the daily-use layer on top of the existing gift range.