Luciole: J'aime, Paris-Brest, & Gateau Meringue

Gateau Meringue

On day 6 of GW, I got cake from Luciole, which is a shop at the Hotel Piena in Kobe, as takeout. I don't recognize the name of the shop, though I've gotten cake from this location before, just the hotel name. Anyway, it's pretty big as a café space, since it might also be the hotel's breakfast space. However, they have a problem with takeout, in that they give you a huge box in a huge bag, which provides some stability, but the protection of the cakes within the box is completely inadequate.

Paris-Brest

There were one centimeter high paper walls to separate cakes, which did nothing to keep the tall, delicate meringue cake (above from their website) from falling over, even with fairly careful handling. I thought I told them something strange last time I ordered at that location that made them just leave the cakes loose inside (and maybe I did), but this time all the blame is on them. That said, the cake was good, better than average from places I've sampled in Kobe when I was sampling for essentially everywhere (which I don't do in Tokyo very widely these days). The Gateau Meringue was still good, but it's just meringue, white chocolate, and some berries in a decorative package. The Paris-Brest had an unusual pastry, not the usual choux pastry, but maybe the soft version used for Japanese-style choux cream. It was good, but I like a much more decadent style.

The final one, J'aime, is pistachio over chocolate. It is much airier/spongier that other dome cakes I have had, which one should guess from the air bubbles, again (like the previous day's) seemingly in keeping with a local style. It also was good and well balanced, but the texture was boringly soft.