Bakery:
Boulangerie Rauk
Address:
422, Ninomiya Street, Saigyo-ku, Fukumoto-cho, Kyoto
Website:
http://rauk.okoshi-yasu.com/
Style:
Japanese
Price:
$$
My final bakery in Kyoto, Boulangerie Rauk was more or less down the street from where I was staying the second time around, so I'd been plotting to visit it for a few days before I took the plunge. More often than not, French baking words are misused, but in this case, Rauk is indeed a boulangerie in that they're almost exclusively bread-oriented with most items leaning towards savoury, though there are a couple pastries like croissants. Maybe, despite the snippets here and there, they're not overly "French", but this small bakery still churns out more rustic breads and definitely more visually-appealing buns than their commercial counterparts, with somewhat higher prices than average. Judging by some sort of award rankings posted around the store, they also... take part in competitions? Or is it simply one of these "top pick" things?
Sweet items seem to be limited to one corner of the bakery, and when I was there - in the late morning - many trays were empty, whether they were sold out or not ready yet. For whatever reason, I decided instead for an item with one of those gold medal signs next to it (though this hadn't done too well in the past): I picked out the green tea bun with walnuts and red bean (183 yen). Well, I picked out green tea from the label and didn't quite catch the red bean. Truth be told, I'm not a red bean fan, so this was disappointing. And despite the fact that green tea, red bean and even walnut is associated as sweet ingredients, the bun itself wasn't sweet at all and had the consistency of a dinner roll. I also think more of a mass would have been better than just whole beans and chunks of walnut thrown into the dough. Oh, and what I took for powdered sugar was just flour; I swear, this would have been better sweeter. Definitely not what I was expecting.... A bad choice on my part, yes, but still I left unimpressed.
Rating: **
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