Gargantua, Imperial Hotel Tokyo

Gargantua is the bakery and pastry shop of the Imperial Hotel: French bread and cakes in the Western tradition the hotel introduced to Japan, plus the ingredients for the Imperial French toast.

The Imperial Hotel’s kitchens taught Japan Western food from the 1890s, and Gargantua, its bakery on the lobby floor, keeps the tradition: French bread, the hotel’s pound cake, the mille-feuille, the shortcake, seasonal cakes and the bread and recipe card for the famous French toast, which must soak overnight. The style is classical, unfashionable and exact, and a generation of Japanese pastry chefs learned it here.

Gargantua is the historical counter of Tokyo: a Meiji-era hotel, a Frank Lloyd Wright bar down the hall, and a pound cake in a box.

What to buy

• The pound cake
• The bread and recipe for the French toast
• The mille-feuille
• The seasonal shortcake