On February 8, 2020, a street-vending dorayaki event was held at Jinchan Shokudo, a Japanese restaurant in the Bastille district of Paris.

This event came about through a three-way collaboration between Morita Farm, an azuki bean farm in Tokachi, Hokkaido; Jinchan Shokudo; and wagashi craftsman Kenichi Iwasaki. Here’s a report on how the street sale went.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the event kicked off almost as a surprise, guerrilla-style, without any advance notice — even the restaurant’s regular customers hadn’t heard about it beforehand.

Even so, after three hours of live cooking and selling out front, roughly 500 dorayaki had sold out completely.

In Paris, dorayaki is also sold at the TORAYA Paris boutique, and there’s a dorayaki-specialty tea salon called Tomo as well. Both of those shops sell dorayaki in the standard size you’d typically find in Japan.

This time, though, since the dorayaki were being cooked right there on the street and handed to passersby as a casual snack, we made them in a special, slightly smaller size. They were handed out in paper bags — the same style commonly used for takeout at Parisian brasseries — rather than wrapped in plastic, placed in carrier bags, or packaged the way they usually are in Japan.

As for who came to try them, the customers seemed to fall into roughly three categories.

The first category was people who had already eaten dorayaki in Japan. Many of them chatted with us at length about their travels there, and ate their dorayaki with a nostalgic smile.

The second category was people who knew what dorayaki was but had never actually tried it. Some told us they’d seen it in the film Sweet Bean (An) but hadn’t had the chance to eat it yet, and said they were looking forward to finally trying it.

The third category was people who had no real idea what it was, but figured it looked delicious enough to buy and try — including some who simply joined the line because they saw a crowd forming. This third category was by far the largest group.

Even so, many people asked us things like, “Is this a one-time event?”, “When’s the next one?”, and “Are you doing this again next week?” — which showed just how much interest there was, not only in trying dorayaki for the first time and enjoying it, but in wanting to come back for more.

In Japan, another popular street-cooked wagashi is taiyaki, and the custom of being drawn in by the smell and buying one fresh off the griddle is well established there. Dorayaki could easily follow the same path — and it seems likely that both dorayaki and taiyaki will start showing up more often on Parisian street corners going forward. The day may not be far off when a shop somewhere starts baking dorayaki regularly, or even daily.

By the way, if any wagashi craftsmen in Japan are ever approached about hosting a street dorayaki event at your location in France, we can help put together a package — arranging for a craftsman to visit, supplying azuki beans, or teaching how to make dorayaki. Feel free to reach out to our editorial team anytime.

Reported on 2/8/2020 by Mika Wada

With thanks to:
Morita Farm (A-net Farm Tokachi Co., Ltd.) — http://azuki-life.com
Jinchan Shokudo — https://pickup.deliverect.com/jinchanshokudo/fr/order/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mika Wada, Editor-in-Chief, Azuki Editorial Team
During a period when swelling and fatigue made both her work and parenting difficult, she found her way back to good health by eating azuki brown rice meals and her own original azuki cereal every day. Having previously worked in the beauty industry, she had already come to appreciate how essential daily diet is to beauty that shines from within — which led her to start Azuki.tokyo as an ambassador spreading the goodness of azuki to women around the world.