Like several thousand other New Yorkers, we’ve been drooling over Kyotofu’s press packet for weeks now, staring at lush, close-focus photos of matcha-dusted brownies and kabocha pumpkin bars, counting the minutes until the tiny Hell’s Kitchen bakery and dessert bar opens its doors. Our temptation is made all the worse by Kyotofu’s proximity to the Noshpad; for months, every time we left the building for a dozen eggs, we walked past the little white boite and tried to peek inside. Finally, last night, all of our anticipation came to an end when we dropped in on Kyotofu’s official opening press event and got a shock– the desserts featured in the November 2006 menu were, to a dish, different from the goodies we’d been gawking at for weeks. But it didn’t take us long to get over it, because this new menu? It’s even better.

Surprise seems to be a key theme at Kyotofu– co-owners Nicole Bermensolo and Michael Berl got a taste of it themselves when they hired Hiromi Tsuruta to design their 800 square-foot space and he announced, “Secret! It’s a secret!” and wouldn’t let them see more than a rudimentary mock-up of the restaurant’s plans. Tsuruta is probably best known in Gotham for his sleek interiors at Chikalicious and both Momofuku eateries, and despite the great acclaim those have won Tsuruta, Kyotofu’s owners were understandably a little nervous. But what they got made them ecstatic: a space that feels larger than it is, with very clearly defined areas for drinking and cooking, as well as a visually arresting dining room with lots of white leather and polygonal angles that evokes just a hint of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We were especially impressed with the efficient use of cooking space in the restaurant; the kitchen is no bigger than many New York apartment kitchens, and by some magic of time-shifting and excellent planning, everything is still made in-house, from the green tea-dipped okara cookies to the savory tofu tsukune chicken meatballs.

As I stood at the bar in the front of the restaurant, drinking a gingery shibuya martini and nibbling my way through sample-sized versions of all but one of Kyotofu’s autumn desserts, I found a few standouts in the deeply nutty sweet black sesame tofu ($7) and the warm chestnut mochi chocolate cake, filled with gooey green tea-anko cream ($10). But my very favorite item, the sansho pepper tofu cheesecake ($9) was complex and delightful, in part because it completely defied my expectations: the cheesecake was light, flecked with aromatic and fragrant sansho pepper that added flavor with very little spicy heat, and just slightly sweet– in other words, this was like no other cheesecake I’d ever tasted. The anmitsu with crystal plum sake ($9), a compote-style dessert made up of miniature mochi, ice creams, and jellies, was also superb.

After nibbling my way through the menu, Bermensolo and I talked about the challenges posed by taking the restaurant’s concept from its home in Japan and importing it to New York. Kyotofu, not actually a chain, but a family-run business with only seven branches in Japan, serves primarily a soy-based menu in Japan, something that required lots of rethinking and tweaking here for New York palates. But the result of all of this revision has become Kyotofu’s credo: to use Japanese ingredients and traditional preparations and incorporate them into a modern, American culinary style. It has been so successful that now the Japanese branches of the restaurant have begun to steal items from the Hell’s Kitchen shop, calling them ‘New York Style’ desserts. And when the results are this well-executed, it’s not hard to see why the Japanese might want a sansho pepper cheesecake of their own.

Kyotofu, 705 Ninth Avenue (at 48th Street), 212-974-6012