Takahachi Bakery

Tribeca has a lot of Japanese restaurants, but none are as sweet as Takahachi Bakery. Among its light offerings like soup and sandwiches are pastries that swap Japanese ingredients into traditional American or French recipes, as with the sweet pea guru guru (top). Instead of the usual cinnamon, gelatinous chunks of sweet pea bind the roll. We would have liked more cream in the kinako (middle photo), as the bread reminded us somewhat of whatever you might call what we used to get at gas stations as special breakfast treats in childhood. Ah, perhaps we reveal too much about our youth. Anyway, the matcha tsubuan (bottom photo) saved the day, with its chewy, green tea-flavored dough surrounded by sweet red bean paste. Speaking of salad days, peas and beans are indeed vegetables, and you can taste them as such no matter how much sugar gets mixed in. But that's OK with us, as a baked good that also gave us our daily dose of vitamins and minerals sounds like a dream come true, then and now.