BROOKLINE — Takeo Sakan can apply finishing touches to a tray of eight Totoro-like buns in under a minute.
The bread treats, filled with a delicate chocolate custard, have pointy ears and cookie bits for the eyes and stomach. Sakan applies chocolate lines for the nose, whiskers, and fur to create a tasty golden cousin of the beloved gray animal featured in the 1988 Japanese animated film “My Neighbor Totoro.”
One Sunday, at the recently reopened Japonaise Bakery & Café, 80 Totoro-ish buns — priced $5.50 each — sold out in 1½ hours. “If I could produce 200 to 300 a day, I could sell them,” sighs Sakan, the owner. He doesn’t have time to make that many himself, and it takes less experienced staff about 5 minutes just to decorate one tray.
The production of the faux Totoro buns reflects the challenges Sakan is facing as his Japanese-French bakery on Beacon Street — Japonaise is the French word for Japanese — comes back to life after an extended two-year closure for remodeling. The bakery, started by his mother, had been unchanged for more than 30 years. Now, Sakan is caught between his exacting nature and a need for more bakery help while loyalists queue at the door.
“I’m an old-school baker,” Sakan, 43, says during one of the days Japonaise is closed. (It’s currently open Thursdays through Sundays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.). “This kind of work wears on people after a while. There’s a lot of manual labor involved but, to me, it’s a labor of love.”
Since the bakery reopened in late July, devotees are purchasing items almost as quickly as they hit the shelves. Specialties like: green tea genoise cake, azuki cream puffs with a thin coat of red bean paste and filled with whipped cream, Kinako twist doughnuts made with soybean flour, and the matcha Ichigo cream croissants filled with strawberries and whipped cream. Sliced white breads — Shoku Pan (made with milk) and a heavy cream version — and tuna rolls are also among the 20 limited offerings.
“I think the quality of Takeo’s product at Japonaise is unmatched,” says long-time customer Irene Li, who has been advising Sakan via Prepshift, a restaurant consulting firm she co-owns in addition to being a chef and cofounder of Mei Mei Dumplings. “You can’t get anything else like it in Boston, which is why there are huge lines every day he’s open.”
The long lines are also for Sakan, who inspires deep affection among regulars.
“We love Takeo,” says Zoran Vidanovic, who discovered the bakery when he moved to Brookline in 2008. “My kids love to visit him; they love to talk to him. The bakery and people there became part of our family.”
“He’s extremely hard working. You really feel that in the food,” says Merry White, a Boston University anthropology professor who specializes in Japanese studies. “For people who have spent time in Japan, it’s a memory jog about all the things you loved in Japan.”
A French native living in Brookline visits Japonaise for memories of home. “He’s never been to France but his pastries are just so, so delicious,” says Christine Gervais. “There are other French patisseries around that are good but I still think Takeo’s pastries are the best.”
Japonaise’s origins stretch to 1985, when Hiroko Sakan opened The Enchanted Kitchen bakery in Newton Center. The Japanese native was recently widowed (her husband had been a chemist at Harvard and Carnegie-Mellon universities) and needed to support her three children, Takeo being the middle child at age 3. Although she had no culinary training, Sakan made cakes like those in Japan, using less sugar than US versions.
Two years later, Hiroko Sakan — completely self-taught — won a Best of Boston award. She then expanded to patisserie items. By 1991, Sakan relocated to Brookline at a spot across from the St. Mary’s MBTA stop and renamed her bakery Japonaise. (She also had a café in Allston, now closed.)
Takeo Sakan’s path to baking was circuitous. Sakan recounts a youth of less-than-stellar academic commitment. When he was 19, his mother’s chief baker quit. She asked Sakan to take a leave from Northeastern University and help, promising it would be temporary. Instead, he became head baker and never went back to college.
After mastering the basics, Sakan moved to San Francisco to work in an artisan bread bakery. He then went on to a one-year apprenticeship at a German Japanese bakery in Saga, southern Japan. That shop was notable, he says, for having the highest daily sales of any bakery in Japan after a popular boy band declared it their favorite.
“I remember I got in there, and I found out later they all had bets on how long I would last,” Sakan recalls. “They were like, ‘There’s no way an American guy can keep up with us.’ It was crazy there; 12-hour days were perfectly normal. But I fit right in, and I learned a crap ton.”
Before his experience in Japan, Sakan had thought of his work as simply assisting his mom. “From age 19 to 33, in my mind, I was never a baker. I didn’t necessarily want to do it. I was just helping her,” he reflects. After working in Japan, he realized: “I was good at it.”
By 2016, Sakan was running Japonaise. He and his mother worked side-by-side, disagreeing at times on how to operate the business. “My mom is a tough cookie,” he says. “She’s very nice but she’s a tough cookie. She has good taste but she likes to do things a certain way. We butt heads.”
Hiroko Sakan, now 74, didn’t want her son to reopen Japonaise in July until he had a larger staff. Lately, she’s been working long hours in the kitchen to help him out. Her other children — daughter Keiko and son Mineo — live across the country and have nonbaking careers.
“Takeo has always worked hard,” Sakan says. “He’s just like my husband: Every day, he thinks about how to make a good thing better.”
When Takeo Sakan closed Japonaise in May 2021, he thought the bakery would reopen in four months. There were miscalculations about renovation costs, supply issues, and misunderstandings about zoning and permitting regulations regarding dining tables (now gone).
Sakan persisted because he did not want to let down longtime customers, particularly those who donated to his GoFundMe campaign. He also found a new purpose after becoming a husband and father during the pandemic.
“I was 42 when I had my first son,” Sakan says; his son is 17 months old. “I’m a little late to the game. I was just very used to my routines. I really grew up during this process. I’ll be straight out: I was never a fully responsible human being.”
Longtime customers see the change.
“Takeo has grown into himself,” says Matt Nicoli, a Brookline resident, whose wife is Japanese and part of the large Japanese contingent favoring the bakery. “I’ve been going there 15 years. He’s embracing his identify as a father and now he wants this (business). I was actually very excited to see this side of him. I think Japonaise has a bright future.”
Li and her Prepshift colleagues are helping Sakan reacclimate to business. “Most of our advice to Takeo has been about keeping his hours and menu limited as he regains momentum,” she says. But on opening day, Li also reminded Sakan to greet customers outside and to stop apologizing for their wait time.
Sakan isn’t thrilled with his current long working hours, but his passion for baking is undiminished. “I love the smile on the customer’s face, to be honest,” he says. “When I see people eat it and the joy they get, that really pushes me. And I love the quality of our product. I know it’s killer quality. I would not be doing this if we were not the same quality as my mom’s.”
Sakan still says “sorry” far too often. He doesn’t need to apologize anymore. His customers forgave him when he reopened.
Japonaise Bakery & Café, 1020 Beacon St., Brookline. 617-566-7730.
Peggy Hernandez can be reached at peggyhernandezboston@gmail.com. Follow her @Peggy_Hernandez
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Brookline’s Japonaise Bakery & Cafe is back, and loyalists are lining up - The Boston Globe
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