Denden [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Denden 
Address: 604-0000 Sanjo Dori, Kamikawarachō, Nakagyō-ward, Kyoto 
Website: n/a 
Style: Japanese 
Price: $$ 

Another bakery located along the Sanjo shopping street is Denden, a warm, homey, somewhat cram-packed bakery with a classic Japanese exterior and wooden accents inside with fake fruits and vegetables along with silly animals in wooden boxes scattered amidst baked goods presented on simple white plates, baskets and sheets of parchment paper. It can get a bit awkward when it comes to seeing what's available and lining up to pay, but nonetheless, the baked goods certainly look more small scale and feature more of a European flavour with flaky French pastries, rustic buns both sweet and savoury, and even little flatbread pizzas

While Denden does have some of the Japanese bakery classics like melon pan and red bean buns, I decided to try one of their decidedly more Western items: the cinnamon apple bun (183 yen). This was as ooey and gooey as you'd expect it to be with fresh slices of apples in the middle of a soft, pull-apart cinnamon spiral. Warming this up a bit in the microwave made this smell and taste very good: a bit of a cross between a cinnamon bun and apple pie. My one issue was that there was a bit too much unevenly distributed icing pooled on top (which was in itself a fairly unusual thing for Japanese baking, which is usually not overly sweet), which led to even more ooey gooeyness and too much sweetness for my liking.

Rating: ***