OISHINESS: Boulangerie Burdigala Baguette

I'm no expert on authentic French bread, but the baguette from Burdigala is my current favorite out of the surprisingly wide selection available in my Tokyo neighborhood. Though Japanese bread is sweet and squishy, and French bread is the extreme opposite, baguettes are just one more aspect of the enchanting French culture whose idealized image exerts such a hold on the popular imagination. The French bakery in my office sells baguette sandwiches (a male Japanese coworker complains that they're "too hard," but the shop is extremely popular with the ladies), and all the bakeries in the Azabu area offer them, at various exorbitant prices. I haven't tried all of them, but I do like the one at Burdigala. It has a great chewy crust, really hard to bite into, and a soft but still chewy interior, great for soaking up soup, yogurt, or nutella. Most important, it has real flavor, an earthy, slightly tangy, taste, which is conspicuously lacking in the baguettes they sell at Panera back home.

My local Burdigala is in Hiroo, but there are other locations in Shinjuku, Tokyo Station, Kyoto, Osaka, Yokohama, and Kawasaki. I have to admit that I was disappointed to find out that it was a chain, since I'd feel better if my favorite baguette were the one from the tiny little bakery a few blocks from my house, which bakes its bread in a tiny little kitchen right next to the shop. The Burdigala bread, along with the various croissants, pastries, and cakes they sell, gets delivered each morning around the time I'm passing by on my daily walk, making the whole street smell sweet. Even though the ovens aren't on the premises, it seems the bread is pretty freshly-made, and it's definitely tasty.