After taking care of brunch with pizza in Nakameguro, I set off for dessert, as always. Mont St. Clair, one of the most celebrated shops in all of Tokyo, is in Jiyugaoka, the stylish neighbourhood, so I paid it a visit. Nakameguro to Jiyugaoka is a short train ride, so I reached the station in no time, but the shop is tucked well away from it, so I had to walk quite a bit. That’s the opposite of most cake shops, which sit near the station where they’re easy to get to. Apparently the patissier-owner deliberately set up in an out-of-the-way spot so he could compete on taste alone.
The entrance
The exterior is so simple that at first glance you wonder whether this is really the famous place. Maybe I should say it suits the mood of Jiyugaoka, an upscale residential area. We went just after the lunch rush, so there was no line outside, but even so it took a good 20 minutes to buy anything inside. We went in, picked out a few things and ate them in the small café seating inside. True to Jiyugaoka, lots of young women were coming in.
Café gentil
I ordered a tea-and-cake set, and the drink comes out first. The café gentil is a frothed coffee, but it’s sweet too, so it looks like a kind of dessert. The foam was really appealing.
Black tea
Since it’s a tiny café attached to a cake shop I didn’t expect much, but they serve proper tea that goes well with dessert. The reputation isn’t for nothing.
Berry tea and honey
This is what I ordered. A classy tea comes out. If only the place weren’t so cramped I’d have liked to spend a leisurely afternoon there, but it was so uncomfortable that all we could do was eat our cakes and leave.
Fromage cru
The shop’s description: a refreshing rare (no-bake) cheesecake pairing kirsch-flavoured pineapple with cream cheese.
I’d heard in passing a while back that the cheesecake here is good, so I picked it. In the end, though, the cheesecake wasn’t the only good thing. From the outside it looks like an ordinary cheesecake, but it’s soft and fluffy and easy to eat, and the flavour gets gradually richer the further in you go, as if it had a gradient. I also liked the zesty fruit set in the middle of the cake as an accent. A cheesecake of truly astonishing polish.
Chocolat exotique
The shop’s description: the sweet tartness of tropical fruit inside a rich chocolate mousse, perfect for summer.
A complex cake where tartness and intensely rich chocolate live side by side. Each ingredient isn’t just delicious on its own; they’re carefully and deliberately put together, so the harmony stands out all the more. Like building a miniature, they stack tiny parts with precision to create the overall impression of the flavour, and the result isn’t a simple, heavy cake like a Sachertorte but a delicate, highly polished cake in a Japanese style. It isn’t just sweet, so it was easy to eat. Above all, the base, a sort of bread or chocolate-coated cracker, was amazingly good. The shop is famous for its chocolate and has even opened a branch in Roppongi, and I can see why.
Pois
The shop’s description: a refreshing summer piece combining the milky taste of coconut cream cheese with mango, passion fruit and orange
This cake looks like a ladybug, and it was the best of everything I ate that day. The round yellow mango sauce dots on the outside look cute, but they also make a big difference to the flavour. Inside was a sour fruit, probably grapefruit, and on top of that it was built up in layers of tart and sweet ingredients. At this level you have to say it’s in a different dimension from an ordinary cake shop. I could see why the patissier deliberately set up far from the station to compete on taste. How many flavours did he prepare for this one small cake, layer them up, and then still give them a single sense of unity? It’s simply amazing. I’ve been to Joël Robuchon and plenty of other top cake shops, but the cakes here are even more complex in construction than those top shops, and they’re balanced perfectly with acidity rather than sweetness. I guess this is what it takes to become a star patissier who defines an era.
A tasting cake
Maybe we looked hungry, because they gave us a bit of cake to taste. It looks ordinary, but it tasted better than most roll-cake specialists. Still, coming right after a tsunami of cake-induced emotion, it looked a bit modest by comparison.
The knife
I took a shot of the knife too. It felt like overkill for cutting cake. There aren’t many seats inside so we had to wait a long time, and the space was cramped, but even so, with this much care put into everything, it seems worth making time for a visit some weekend. On top of that, Jiyugaoka has plenty of other places to wander around and shop besides this one.
Mont St. Clair
The shop’s description: a cake of coffee-flavoured biscuit joconde wrapped in crème au beurre and set in a hazelnut and almond praline.
On a roll, I ordered one more cake. I wanted to try the one that carries the shop’s name. Just like the cakes before it, the level is very high. Inside are layers of coffee cake, and the flavour gets richer the further in you go. It melts away the moment you put it in your mouth, almost like ice cream. It made me wonder whether this was really a cake at all. But fantastic as this one was, the winner of the day was still the Pois.
On a roll, one more shot, of the water glass
Even for a small café, the water came in a proper glass. There was lemon in the water, too. They brought out the water and glass best suited to getting the most out of dessert. The desserts that day were deeply satisfying in every way.
On the way from Jiyugaoka to Komazawa..
Since I’d come all the way to Jiyugaoka, I thought I’d buy some chocolate as omiyage (souvenirs), but I was told what I wanted had already sold out. So I figured I’d buy jam instead since it keeps well, and moved on to the shop’s sister store, Confiture H.
Arrived
The area around Komazawa University is one of the wealthier neighbourhoods in Tokyo. I guess that’s why a shop built around delicious-if-a-bit-pricey food can sit there on its own and still do good business.
Right across from it there’s also a bakery from the Mont St. Clair group.
I thought, if I lived in a neighbourhood like this I could eat good bread every day.. Seems like a nice place to live. The rent must be high, though..
A walking path in Komazawa Olympic Park
I had plans that evening too, so I killed time with friends just wandering back and forth around the park. The jogging course of the spacious sports park, a quiet upscale residential area off to one side, and lots of people walking their dogs. A peaceful scene like this is another side of Tokyo. To be honest, unless you live around here there’s not much reason to come, but it struck me as a really pleasant place to live.