Mr. Santos Antoine.

Until the opening of Criollo

At the company where I worked for four years after coming to Japan, I was busy traveling all over the country to teach chocolate technology and promote the company. At that time, I was not as good at Japanese as I am now, and I was so stressed and exhausted from dealing with new customers every day that I decided to return to Japan, thinking that I could no longer do my best in Japan. My plan was to travel the world, rest my body and mind, return to France, get married, and open my own restaurant in Australia. But on my way to buy a plane ticket, I got into a motorcycle accident.

It was a serious accident that left me bedridden for two months, but while I was away from work, I began to feel much better mentally. Since I had studied Japanese and made many business acquaintances, I began to think that it would be a good idea to stay and work in Japan. For a while, I was still traveling around the country for consulting work, but I thought it would be better to be in a place where customers could visit me, so I opened a small pastry school in Kotake Mukaihara.

My wife wanted to open a store someday, so we rented a building with a store on the first floor and a school and office on the top.

She was crazy energetic and started construction even though she hadn't gotten a bank loan yet, opened a department store in Ginza, and opened stores in Ueno and Nakameguro.

Internet sales were still very rare at that time, and I bought a book called "A Website in a Week" because it would have been very expensive to ask someone else to create a website for me, so I created one in a week. Now I get a lot of orders from all over the country via the Internet.

My wife, who used to work for a wine import company, always loved to eat, but as she visited many restaurants to sell wine, her taste buds became more and more refined.

She also had a great influence on the taste of the cakes I make now.

Advice from the wife

Right after I came to Japan, the company I was working for had 10 stores, and I had my own showcase there. But every day, only my cakes remained unsold. I was teaching them how to make sweets, but it was so embarrassing.

French pastry and Japanese confectionery are completely different. At the time, I was doing things the French way, but the sponge and cream were different. And in France, beautiful looking pastries sell, while in Japan, delicious looking ones sell. It's best if you can combine them into one, but if you can't, then you have to go in the "delicious" direction, otherwise it won't be accepted in Japan.

Her advice ranged from texture, taste, and appearance to product packaging and store presentation. After that, my sweets changed completely and started to gain popularity.

I wasn't afraid to change my pastry making to fit the Japanese market. I'm a very soft person. If it tastes good when you actually eat it, then go for it. Even if you've spent a lot of time making something, if there's something better, it's natural to choose that one, isn't it?

What is more important than a recipe book?

In the past 21 years, there are only two products whose recipes have not changed. All the rest have been adjusted year after year after year.

When I was teaching at school, I would make two new pastries every month. That way, the students would be able to open their own stores. I now have a total of 500 different recipes. But I don't use any of them now. I have made two books, but I don't use the recipes in them anymore. You have to make a lot of adjustments to fit the time period to make it a viable product. If you don't keep studying and changing, the clock will stop.

Even now, with the Corona disaster, I still try to visit various pastry shops every week. Sometimes it's a shock to find sweets that are better than ours, but it's not a bad shock. It's not a bad shock.

If you don't have a soft head, you won't be able to keep trying one after another.

But before that, I want to make the current sweets more stable and maintain the quality no matter who makes them. If we don't maintain the same quality all the time, we will fall short of our customers' expectations and they will eventually leave us. So while new things are important, I think it's even more important to always be able to provide the same taste in sweets.

Even if you have a recipe, if the temperature is wrong, the timing is off, or you are sick, it will affect the consistency of the cream and the texture will change.

Most pastry chefs think, "I have a new recipe, it's delicious," "OK, let's make it into a product, let's sell it," but I think that's very dangerous. But I think that's very dangerous. My approach is to start from there.

If I don't raise the level to a higher and higher level beforehand, various people will be involved, and various factors will cause a slight deviation. As a result, the customers will feel sorry for us. That's why I try to raise the bar as high as possible from the beginning.

Now, I'm not making sweets all by myself, so it's no good if I'm satisfied with "Oh, I've made something delicious.

God of Criollo

Sweets are a part of life, aren't they? When you eat something delicious, you are happy. I am happy when I eat something delicious, and even happier when I eat something a little sweet afterwards. I want sweets to always be a part of our normal life, where there is bread and wine.

It is said that the customer is God. Of course this is true, and customers are very important. However, I think the staff is just as important.

If the people who make the sweets don't love them, it will affect the customer service and the atmosphere of the store. If the staff can get along and enjoy their work, good products will be born.

In order to make customers happy, the staff has to be happy first. We are selling a little bit of a dream, so if the customers are not happy, there is no point in doing our job.

My biggest dream is to make all the staff involved in the store happier and happier. It's a very difficult goal to achieve, and it's not going to be perfect, but if I can do that, I'll be satisfied.

Respect Your Wife.

So, in closing, I really want to say one thing.

Japan is really a wonderful country, everyone is kind and obeys the rules, and I think it is one of the best countries in the world, but for a long time, people have been making fun of their wives, haven't they? I hate it when people say things like, "My wife is such a bore," or "She's so careless. I really dislike that.

Maybe it's a tradition from the time of the samurai, but this world works because of women. Everyone forgets that. Wives are really gods, just as they are called Kami-sama or Kami-san. If it weren't for my wife, I would be a very small person. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't be here today.

Text and photos by Tsutomu Ogasawara