I found the best cake shop in the world. This is wild.
It's on a street downtown that is otherwise just parking garages. The building looks like garbage, and the stairwell looks like a horror movie. The ground floor entrance is a sheet of plywood with hinges and a handwritten card giving the name of the shop in French. Since this is Japan, very few people can read the French.
Anyway you manhandle the sheet of plywood open, go up the dark stairs, and on the top floor there's a heavy metal door with one of those eye-slots as if it's an illegal gambling den. You go in and there's a counter and two little tables about the size of cafeteria trays and old mismatched chairs. The owner works alone with foreign movies on all the time on his computer screen. He's about 30 and eccentric in that wonderful Japanese way, where you are so devoted to quality that it becomes a mania. For example every time before he cuts a slice of cake he heats the knife with a blowtorch first so the cut is clean and perfect. After he cuts it he'll add little extras by hand -- shards of chocolate or hand-made cookie. You can eat in the shop but I always get the feeling he'd rather you didn't.
The cake is incredible. This is the kind of cake that rich people eat at Michelin-starred restaurants. It's like I didn't know how good cake could be. You take a bite and there are three or four distinct flavors in your mouth working in unexpected ways. Every day there are two types of cake, and when they are sold out the shop closes. So it opens at 1:30 and there's no way to know how long you have.
I am spoiled for life. I will never get a strawberry shortcake from the supermarket ever again.
It's on a street downtown that is otherwise just parking garages. The building looks like garbage, and the stairwell looks like a horror movie. The ground floor entrance is a sheet of plywood with hinges and a handwritten card giving the name of the shop in French. Since this is Japan, very few people can read the French.
Anyway you manhandle the sheet of plywood open, go up the dark stairs, and on the top floor there's a heavy metal door with one of those eye-slots as if it's an illegal gambling den. You go in and there's a counter and two little tables about the size of cafeteria trays and old mismatched chairs. The owner works alone with foreign movies on all the time on his computer screen. He's about 30 and eccentric in that wonderful Japanese way, where you are so devoted to quality that it becomes a mania. For example every time before he cuts a slice of cake he heats the knife with a blowtorch first so the cut is clean and perfect. After he cuts it he'll add little extras by hand -- shards of chocolate or hand-made cookie. You can eat in the shop but I always get the feeling he'd rather you didn't.
The cake is incredible. This is the kind of cake that rich people eat at Michelin-starred restaurants. It's like I didn't know how good cake could be. You take a bite and there are three or four distinct flavors in your mouth working in unexpected ways. Every day there are two types of cake, and when they are sold out the shop closes. So it opens at 1:30 and there's no way to know how long you have.
I am spoiled for life. I will never get a strawberry shortcake from the supermarket ever again.
