Cascade [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Cascade 
Address: 3 Chome-2-1 Aioicho, Chūō-ku, Kōbe-shi, Hyōgo-ken
Website: http://www.cascade-kobe.co.jp/
Style: Japanese
Price: $$ 

A great many bakeries encountered on my Japanese Cake Tour aimed to replicate a French patisserie, complete with croissants and little flags indicating the most authentic baked goods; several more adventurous bakeries had their sights set on something a little different. Cascade, a local Kobe-area bakery chain, was one such bakery; their goal? To turn their run-of-the-mill bakery into a sort of German Konditorei. Naturally, that does include the presence of little German flags here and there, though to be quite honest, I had a hard time distinguishing how a few of the items qualified as being German flag-worthy, but no matter.


Two items did inevitably catch my attention amid their large selection of baked goods: a sort of two-tone roll cake slice and the pretzel below. In-store, I just froze. Was it? Could it be? In theory, yes, that dough and darker mass should have been poppy seed, but my gut instinct was that it wasn't. More than that, of course I knew it to be chocolate!

Nonetheless, I was still not completely convinced and it did look like one of the better items for sale, so I grabbed chocolate almond pretzel (205 yen). Putting aside the fact that it was so meant to be poppy seed, this was very, surprisingly good! I started with saying I'd try a small piece and save the rest for later, but ended up eating the whole thing at once -- it must have been the combination of flaky "pretzel" dough, softer, sponge cake-like chocolate dough filling and vanilla glaze and some slivered almonds generously coating the top. A bit of crunch, some chewiness, delicious blend of flavours. Oh yeah -- so wasn't expecting that from a chain of underground walkway bakeries!

Rating: ***1/2