TOMO

Dorayaki at the centre of a Paris pâtisserie

Dorayaki is the whole architecture here: two small pancakes closed around a filling, treated not as a fixed classic but as a base flexible enough to carry French pastry ideas. TOMO is a French-Japanese pâtisserie and tea room shaped by Takanori Murata, formerly of Aida, and Romain Gaia, and the range runs well past red bean paste. Ricotta-yuzu, matcha, fleur de sel, orange blossom and praline sit alongside Paris-Brest, baba au rhum, baba au whiskey and a lemon-yuzu tart version, each folding a French reference into the same pancake-and-filling form. Sourcing matters to the result: organic and reasoned agriculture, fruit and vegetables from a permaculture farm in the Perche, and eggs from the house’s own hens in Normandy.

A bright tea room near the Japanese quarter

The format sits closer to a polished Japanese tea house and boutique pâtisserie than to a boulangerie. There are two Paris shops, Opéra and Odéon, the first of them beside the city’s dense cluster of Japanese food, which is exactly the right neighbourhood for what TOMO does. The rooms are luminous, with big bay windows and light wood furniture, warm rather than austere, and scaled for a small gourmet stop rather than a long meal. Sweets can be eaten in or carried out, so the same counter serves a seated tea and a bag to take away. The house also runs workshops, which extends it past a display of finished pastry into something closer to a teaching kitchen.

Order the classic, then the black sesame daifuku

Start with a plain dorayaki to understand the structure of the house specialty, then move into one of the French-Japanese variations. Ricotta-yuzu pushes it toward citrus and dairy, matcha keeps it closer to Japanese tea flavour, and the Paris-Brest and baba versions show how far the format stretches. After that, change texture and add mochi: strawberry and fig for fruit, sesame and matcha cream for something richer. The most distinctive second order is the Kurogoma daifuku, rice-flour dough filled with black sesame and white chocolate ganache over red bean purée. For a tea-led visit, the small shortbreads developed with Jugetsudo are the pairing to look for, connecting the pastry work directly to Japanese tea. A strong first visit runs dorayaki, a mochi, the Kurogoma daifuku and something tea-linked.