In the same way that no one is surprised to see a nigiria ramen or a yakitori in a letter, it is likely that there are fewer and fewer people who find it exotic to find a dorayaki or a mochi as a dessert or in a stand while walking through a shopping center. Just as it happened before with salty cuisine, Japanese pastries are in fashion, and today, mainly in cities like Madrid and Barcelona, it is now possible to go to a pastry shop and accompany the tea or coffee with a cotton cheesecake Japanese, instead of a classic French croissant.
“Starting in the year 2000, Japan's borders opened up to tourism and that is why there is more demand. People have learned about the product and now they are looking for it here,” argues Noelia Tomoshigue, pastry chef at Monroe Bakes (Avenida de la Paz, 21, Getafe). Her name has been heard for a few years when people talk about the best pastry chefs in the country – she was a Revelation Pastry Chef at Madrid Fusión 2023 – along with others such as Natsumi Mizumoto, head pastry chef at Casa Bonay (Barcelona), also of Japanese origin. . Born in Seville, Tomoshigue opened her workshop in 2021, where she makes a pastry that she defines as a “very personal fusion” and in which her Japanese roots, Spanish tradition, and her French culinary training come together. To make her products, she not only uses common ingredients in Japanese preparations such as tea. matchahe yuzu and others less known such as black sesame or sudachi —a citrus fruit—, but its origins are also reflected in the way they are treated. It follows the lines of Japanese pastry: lightness and just the right sweetness. “In Japan, fresh fruits are used a lot, while here they make compotes, coulis…”, he points out as an example.
Tomoshigue's display case is changing, but there are two products that never leave their menu: cotton cheesecake and the mille crepe. Regarding the first, with a price of 5.50 euros per portion, the pastry chef indicates that it is “spongy” and this is achieved “with prolonged baking in the oven for two hours, at a very low temperature and in a bain-marie.” Regarding the second, Tomoshigue points out that its creator was a Japanese who created it based on Italian lasagna in the sixties. To make it, he makes the crepes that make it up one by one and then assembles it with cream between each of the layers and strawberry slices between each three. “It is an iconic cake and it is my best seller“, it states. Each “generous” portion is priced at 6.95 euros.
Tomoshigue believes that he opened his business at a favorable time, when the Spanish customer already knew, albeit in a basic way, some aspects of Japanese cuisine. A very different scenario than that found almost 40 years ago, the Japanese Takhasi Ochiai, who then opened a pastry shop in the heart of Barcelona's Eixample (Comte Urgell, 110, Barcelona). So, don't even want the sushi It was a product for mass consumption in Spain like now, and he decided to do “what everyone else did,” says his son Ken. The history of this establishment changed in the nineties, when it became the reference in Japanese sweets that it is today. “Japanese companies began to settle in Catalonia, such as Nissan and Panasonic, and the managers they sent from Japan began to arrive in the city.” In a fit of homesickness, one of them asked Taskhasi if he could make him a dorayaki, thus marking a change in the venue's offering, which was later reinforced by the arrival of manga drawings on Catalan regional television. “The children came looking dorayakis like in Doraemon,” adds Ken. Today it is one of the best-selling products and they make it following the recipe they learned in Japan: dough with flour, water, eggs, honey, sake and sugar. The traditional one is ankomade with beans azukis candied, but by popular request they have different flavors, such as tea matchathe sweet potato one and the chocolate one.
Since 2019, when Ken Ochiai returned from training and working in Japan, the Barcelona pastry shop has had a “purer, very seasonal and minimalist” display case of wagashi, as the traditional Japanese pastry that Ochiai defines as “sweeter” is called, due to the habits of Japanese society. “In addition to the fact that until recently there were no refrigeration methods and sugar was a preservative, traditional pastries are eaten as a snack or in ceremonies. It's like in England, it is consumed at tea time. The sauces in Japanese food are very sweet, so they are not appealing as a dessert.” Creations such as the mochiai“a Takashi invention,” Ken points out, in which instead of doing the mochi With bean paste, a mousse is used that results in a lighter product “with a surprising texture.” There is of cheesecakestrawberry, gianduja, matcha or yuzu tea, at 4.95 euros per unit. Of the total ingredients used in the pastry, 90% come from Japan and even the Christmas creations draw on Japanese tradition. Their panettones are cherry blossom and tea matcha (both at 28 euros) and the nougat, with tea and raspberry (21.50 euros).
In Madrid, Panda Patisserie boasts of having been the first Japanese pastry shop in the city and one of the few in Spain when it started in 2015. “At that time not even Starbucks had tea matcha“, says Borja Gracia, one of those responsible for the project, as an example of the limited influence and consumption of Japanese gastronomy at that time. Panda, he says, “was born to solve that,” after seeing how in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, Japanese pastries were successfully making their way. Panda Patisserie opened in 2015, as the sweet project of the izakaya Hattori Hanzo (Calle de Mesonero Romanos, 17) and, in Gracia's opinion, “it marked a before and after.” They started with traditional pastries —dorayakis, mochisetc—and they boast of making “modern Japanese pastries like they do there” and of having been the first to bring the cotton cheesecake, a “very complex” recipe whose perfection took them hundreds of tests. Now they sell the complete cake for 17.90 euros in their recently opened store in the Chamberí district (31 Viriato Street) and they also ship it throughout the Peninsula. Another of the snacks that are objects of desire are fluffy pancakes which began serving in 2019 and caused queues at the door of Hattori Hanzo for months. So much so that they now offer the possibility of pre-booking online to ensure a snack. “We learned to make them after eating them a lot in Japan. We even had to import machinery because the plates that are in Europe are not useful,” recalls Gracia, who believes that the Asian country is “one of the meccas of sweets” and that, without a doubt, there has been a considerable change in the last ten years. . “In the Japanese restaurants in Spain, at the end of 2014, they gave you a mochi frozen and a green tea ice cream.”
A short distance from Hattori Hanzo, behind the Congress of Deputies, the mochi of Umikobake (Calle de Los Madrazo, 18, Madrid) It is already an icon of space. He was already one in the sister restaurant, the Japanese Umiko, and now he has done the same in the place dedicated to sweets that they opened a year ago with fusion, as in their salty cuisine, as a flag. Here, in addition to specifically Japanese preparations such as rice cake—already an icon of the establishment, whose recipe they adapt to make a version with thinner dough—French flaky pastries conceived under the Japanese prism are also sold. In a place dominated by the electric blue that identifies the brand, the umisan, Umikobake's interpretation of the croissant. “We try to make it less sweet, not cloying,” says Alejandro García, the pastry chef at the head of the business who was previously, for seven years, head pastry chef at the three-star DiverXO. The shape also changes, round, since “in Japan the circular shape is very important,” says Juan Alcaide, one of the founders of Umiko. On the menu they always have about 10 varieties and a special one of the month in which they allow themselves to “play” more, and on the day of the visit for this report, it is tea matcha with kit-kat of green tea. There are also classic versions, without filling, chocolate, raspberry, tiramisu, and apple and tarte tatin with seaweed. nori, among others. On the eve of Christmas, traditional sweets such as the roscón in which they use yuzuor the panettones, which this year include a version with tea matcha and white chocolate.
#39Dorayakis39 #39mochis39 #39cotton #cheesecakes39 #Spanish #pastry #shop #Japan