Mogu: Cheesecakes and a Copper-Pot Rice Lunch by Wakayama Station

Overview

Mogu occupies the ground floor of Atlas Tower, three minutes' walk — about two hundred metres — from JR Wakayama Station, which makes it one of the easier stops in the city for anyone travelling without a car. It opened on 1 July 2023, and its owner is not a confectioner but Kyowa Medical Group, a pharmacy company whose self-medication arm develops low-sugar and gluten-free food. That lineage shows in the case, where sugar-reduced and gluten-free cakes sit alongside the ordinary ones rather than in a corner of their own, and the kitchen works to allergy requests.

Cheese is the pâtissier's subject. The signature is a Gorgonzola Dolce, ample and mild rather than sharp, and the case usually also holds a baked cheesecake, a dense Basque, a pistachio rare cheesecake and a cheese brulee pie that is blowtorched to order if you eat in. The group's own labels are sold here too — hi-cheese, a terrine made with cream cheese from Hokkaido milk, and CUICUI, small unbaked cheesecakes in a run of flavours. Gluten-free biscuits and low-sugar financiers are boxed for gifts.

Lunch is served until 14:00 and rewards a little planning: the rice is cooked to order in a copper hagama and takes twenty minutes or more, so the shop asks you to book by phone. There are twenty-five seats, buggies can be wheeled in, high chairs and a microwave for baby food are on hand, and sockets and Wi-Fi make it a place people work in. Cards, transport IC cards and the usual QR wallets are accepted. Doors open at 11:00 and generally close at 17:00, with Thursday and Sunday off; the shop posts each month's opening days on Instagram, and it has no car park of its own.