Brother Bakery [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Brother Bakery
Address: 660 Hashinishichō, Nakagyō-ku, Kyōto
Website: n/a
Style: Japanese 
Price: $$ 

Having stumbled upon this shopping street quite by chance, I was excited by how many bakeries I ended up grabbing (and foregoing) along the way. Brother Bakery is a smaller local bakery with, I believe, just two locations in Kyoto, and while it doesn't have the extensive selection other mass bakeries may have, they aim to be more rustic, perhaps slightly fancier with quite the selection of sweet flaky danish pastries in inventive flavour combinations. Unlike other bakeries, each baked good was unique; it wasn't just a bun served with different toppings or fillings. The dough, the appearance and garnishes were all one-of-a-kind, which was very nice to see after one too many trips to those cookie cutter bakeries. I just wish I had the patience and capabilities to decipher each one of the labels and know all of what they had!

One item I could figure out, however, was the matcha white chocolate bun (151 yen). This was a lovely dark green matcha topping - similar perhaps to a melon bun or Hokkaido bun - sprinkled with white chocolate chips atop a soft, mildly flaky bun that was similarly interwoven with swirls of matcha. I really liked the bun itself; the texture was a bit more complex than the typical "white bread" you find in Japanese bakeries. The matcha topping was also good, though not as flavourful as I expected it, given the deep colour. White chocolate and matcha is a great combination, but I wasn't a fan of the actual white chocolate chips used; they were too pasty or chalky in taste and texture. Maybe crushed chunks from an actual chocolate bar would have been better?

Rating: ***