Boulangerie S.Igarashi — Restaurant in Tokyo

Mixed results on the bakery items, some great, some quite mediocre and disappointing.

Ham and cheese baguette: wonderful flavor; perfect texture of the bread that had good chewiness and the butter provided a nice tangy flavor to compliment the ham.

Croissant: standard for a Japanese bakery, but below average if compared to an actual French bakery. The focus was clearly to make the exterior crust beautiful, but the interior lacked the proper butteriness of a good croissant. A bit disappointing if you are familiar with proper croissants, but they are quite ok compared to the the croissants you find in Tokyo.

Weekend Citron: be aware, the name and description does not clearly indicate that this is a citron bread, not a citron cake. The bread was not bad, it was not great. As a bread, it is very dense in texture. I was mostly disappointed it was not cake so it is unfair to judge. Having had it once, I would not choose to buy it again as it the flavor combination did not strike a complimentary combination. The flavors of bread, lemon preserves and frosting were very independent of each other instead of complimenting each other.

Pistachio “snail Danish” pastry (I don’t recall the actual name): as a westerner, I loved this as it reminded me of the pastries back in Europe. This pastry was quite good, provided that one enjoys sweet pastries of the western variety. Very well balanced flavors, but those that prefer Japanese desserts and pastries may find it too sweet.

Vegetable tart (I don’t recall the actual name): quite good flavors with the mix of vegetables the chose for topping. Capable of being a small lunch just by itself. Just be careful it is not the easiest to eat because there are so many vegetables (a great problem to have)! Make sure you have plenty of wet napkins...

I had a craving for a cinnamon roll when visiting Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo so I found this bakery on the map and decided to give it a try. By around 1 PM on Sunday, there weren't many types of bread left to choose from. I bought a cinnamon roll (360yen without tax) and a pistachio bread (420yen without tax).

The cinnamon roll was quite small, and it was too sweet for me. I couldn't finish it without pairing it with coffee. The cinnamon flavor was overpowered by the excessive sweetness, making it rather mediocre.

As for the pistachio bread, it had honey and sugar added, giving it a subtle sweetness that doesn’t go along with the pistachio flavor imo. There wasn't much wheat aroma either. The ingredients in the bread seemed to be of higher quality, which probably explains the price but fancy ingredients don’t necessarily make for a good bread.

Both items left me...

Excellent bakery. I particularly loved the mango and cardamom bread! Be aware that you need to apply online for a ticket in order to go there. I registered at 9:01 (registration start at 9:00 and bakery open at 10:00) on a Saturday and got the ticket n°30 and was able to enter the bakery at 10:50. Great system, so that you can register at home and don't have to wait outside for ages (as some old reviews are mentioning). You just need to make a little calculation to estimate at what around what time you'll be...