Of all the French pastry shops in Tokyo, Patisserie Sadaharu Aoki is the most outrageously sleek. Just look at the logo: black letters, gray letters, upper case, lower case, all in that slim, trim, minimalist font. The stores themselves have the same bare aesthetic, with big glass windows and spotlit display tables. But the cakes are an explosion of color, especially the kinds of color you don't expect in a cake. They're not squares or triangles, but long bars, like ingots of gold. And the flavors are a daring blend of French and Japanese obsessions, things like the famous matcha opera (a layering of green tea and chocolate) and the yuzu cheesecake (the Japanese citron mixed with fromage frais). Sadaharu Aoki is a Japanese pastry chef who studied and made his name in Paris, so the Tokyo branches of his name are actually outposts of the French mother-ship.
Perhaps because I eat so many purple sweet potatoes, I was instantly drawn to the purple cake above. The color reflects the main ingredient, cassis, which I think is the same thing as the English black currant. However, while you never see black currants in anything but jelly, cassis is a popular flavor in Japan, found in everything from soda to chewing gum. Here, there are two cassis layers: the mild, moussy top and the sharp, sour middle layer with bits of berry included. These fruit layers alternate with plain chocolate cake (possibly with some almond in it, though I didn't taste that - I'm just guessing by the almond perched on top). Between the bottom chocolate and cassis layers there's a very thin, invisible from the outside, layer of crunchy, sweet praline, and on the very top there's a thin coating of sticky chocolate on one side and a swirl of crystalized sugar and pulverized pistachio on the other. Not only is this cake a looker, it's also an intriguing and delicious combination of flavors and textures.
The chocolate-almond cake is simpler, but absolutely perfect. It's everything a grown-up could wish for in a chocolate cake: moist, rich, and dewily alcoholic. The bottom layer is soaked in some kind of liquour, while the upper layers are crumby but still luscious with the ganache filling. A thinner, stickier layer of dark ganache is poured over the top and sides, and there's a ridge of milk chocolate standing upright down the center. Though the almond flavor isn't noticeable, I think it contributes some moisture to the cake layers, and though chocolate is the overwhelming impression, it's far from on-dimensional with the combination of dark and milk. This is the best chocolate cake I've had in Tokyo, where most cakes are dryer and lighter and more refined. The big flavor and rich density of this cake push it ahead of the competition.
Of all the French pastry shops in Tokyo, Patisserie Sadaharu Aoki is the most outrageously sleek. Just look at the logo: black letters, gray letters, upper case, lower case, all in that slim, trim, minimalist font. The stores themselves have the same bare aesthetic, with big glass windows and spotlit display tables. But the cakes are an explosion of color, especially the kinds of color you don't expect in a cake. They're not squares or triangles, but long bars, like ingots of gold. And the flavors are a daring blend of French and Japanese obsessions, things like the famous matcha opera (a layering of green tea and chocolate) and the yuzu cheesecake (the Japanese citron mixed with fromage frais). Sadaharu Aoki is a Japanese pastry chef who studied and made his name in Paris, so the Tokyo branches of his name are actually outposts of the French mother-ship.
Perhaps because I eat so many purple sweet potatoes, I was instantly drawn to the purple cake above. The color reflects the main ingredient, cassis, which I think is the same thing as the English black currant. However, while you never see black currants in anything but jelly, cassis is a popular flavor in Japan, found in everything from soda to chewing gum. Here, there are two cassis layers: the mild, moussy top and the sharp, sour middle layer with bits of berry included. These fruit layers alternate with plain chocolate cake (possibly with some almond in it, though I didn't taste that - I'm just guessing by the almond perched on top). Between the bottom chocolate and cassis layers there's a very thin, invisible from the outside, layer of crunchy, sweet praline, and on the very top there's a thin coating of sticky chocolate on one side and a swirl of crystalized sugar and pulverized pistachio on the other. Not only is this cake a looker, it's also an intriguing and delicious combination of flavors and textures.
The chocolate-almond cake is simpler, but absolutely perfect. It's everything a grown-up could wish for in a chocolate cake: moist, rich, and dewily alcoholic. The bottom layer is soaked in some kind of liquour, while the upper layers are crumby but still luscious with the ganache filling. A thinner, stickier layer of dark ganache is poured over the top and sides, and there's a ridge of milk chocolate standing upright down the center. Though the almond flavor isn't noticeable, I think it contributes some moisture to the cake layers, and though chocolate is the overwhelming impression, it's far from on-dimensional with the combination of dark and milk. This is the best chocolate cake I've had in Tokyo, where most cakes are dryer and lighter and more refined. The big flavor and rich density of this cake push it ahead of the competition.
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