Beard Papa Cream Puffs — munchies review

by Kris   ⋅   April 30, 2006   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

Sometimes I ponder the oddities of life. Okay I ponder about them a lot. Like why would people in Hawai’i stand in line all day for a cream puff? Well, that’s what happened when Beard Papa first opened up shop. Well, at first they kinda piggybacked on Shirokiya, a local Japanese department store/supermarket/bakery located in Ala Moana, the largest open air mall in the world. Hawai’i loves cream puffs; everyone praises Liliha Bakery’s Coco Puffs and Komoda’s, so of course word traveled fast and soon the queue was out the door and around the block.

An Osaka based company, Muginoho Ltd., who have a handful of stores in NY, NJ, MA, CA, and 240 kiosks in Japan, are popular for a reason. Their cream puffs are soooo good! There’s just something different about Japanese bakeries. Their emulation of French pastry (even though the cream puff originated in Italy, humor me here), innate perfectionism and sugar overload aversion makes for an awesome baked treat. Beard Papa takes it a step further by creating two separate pastry shell layers. One is the classic pâte à choux, which if you bake or watch people bake on Food Network, you know has a lot of eggs and butter and is incredibly soft and shapeless as a batter, but poufs up thanks to the eggs and cooking chemistry magic, aka: steam. Beard Papa encapsulates this layer with a crunchy outer shell that’s more like pâte brisée, or pie crust. It’s like discovering the Buckminster Fuller (the father of geodesic domes) of cream puffs!

Next comes the filling, which is also a blend of two extremes: heavy custard and fluffy whipped cream. Don’t be alarmed when you see teeny black specks in the cream. This is because they don’t use the cheapie vanilla in a bottle from Safeway. They only use handpicked Madagascar vanilla bean seeds to flavor the cream, you know, the kind Martha Stewart uses, and that’s what the specks are. What’s really cool is that the shells are filled after you order, to ensure you eat the freshest, crispiest, tastiest cream puff ever. All that’s left is a generous dusting of confectioner’s sugar/snow and you’re ready to sink into the freshest, crispiest, tastiest cream puff ever. Beard Papa’s puffs are actually pretty large; almost 4″ in diameter. They also offer special flavors which rotate from chocolate, green tea, strawberry, caramel, and coffee. If you need even more variety, they also have an éclair version, which is generously dipped in chocolate.

We went to the one in Hawaii Kai, and Lee (pictured above) says only Hawai’i stores feature Beard Papa wearing a lei. I just found out that one’s opening May 12th on 99 Yerba Buena Lane, so it’s nice that we won’t have to board a plane for our next Beard Papa fix. I think it’s fitting that he’s made it to SF since he appears to be dressed like a fisherman or fisherman/chef?. If there are none in your area, cry.. just kidding.. Muginoho Ltd hopes to expand to 50 U.S. shops by next year. I’m sure they can meet that goal.

About the Author:

Kris Kobayashi-Nelson is an avid food adventurist who has tried everything from jellyfish to sea cucumber to chicken gizzards. She loved liver and onions with ketchup as a kid. Now she’s a vegetarian who eats fish. Wow, if that doesn’t make you wanna eat some cream puffs, I dunno what will.

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