Ramen or Cake?

A nice tall glass of beer with a hot delicious-looking bowl of ramen. That is pure happiness for this guy. I am sure you are saying to yourself "I guess you chose the ramen since there is no cake in the picture above." But what if that isn't really the question I was asking? What if what I was asking was "Is this cake or ramen?" Am I blowing your mind? Tsukuba's Alain Marie Patisserie certainly blew my mind.

Alain Marie

Alain Marie Patisserie is located in the Matsushiro area of Tsukuba. It is near the big Wonder Rex in Tsukuba. Just turn left at the steak restaurant on Route 19, go a few minutes straight and you're there.

My wife and I visited this patisserie on a late rainy Monday afternoon. We wanted a nice dessert with our dinner that evening.

Inside

When you walk into the patisserie, there are two parts to it. There is the cafe area and the cake display and sweets area. Just like any other cake shop in Japan, everything is displayed for you to choose from.

The glass case has different cakes, puddings, chocolates, and a cake that looks like a very realistic apple (It really does look like an apple) on display. There are also a few desserts and cakes that look very interesting. We bought two of those interesting-looking desserts, a canelé, and a chocolate lollipop.

The Café Section

I should mention that the cafe side of Alain Marie looks like a pleasant place to have a coffee or a cup of tea. There is inside and outside dining for everyone to enjoy their sweets. The cafe isn't small either. I believe it can fit up to thirty people max. Unfortunately, we were on a schedule that day so we couldn't eat in. We would have to try out the café area another time.

Is that Sukuna's finger?

Oh! This is for all the anime fans. Before you leave Alain Marie, make sure you go to the anime display area. It is a very small area but you can check out two pieces of masterful dessert anime art. One is from the popular show Jujutsu Kaisen. It is a very real-looking Sukuna's finger chocolate something. It looks amazing and very life-like. The other is the One Piece Gomu Gomu Fruit. This piece of cake art was also very impressive. I am not sure what it is made from but it certainly looks like the fruit jumped out of a TV screen and landed on this patisseries' counter. Unfortunately, neither of these amazing dessert pieces of art are for sale. But there is a book by this display that has cakes with different anime drawings which you can order on your special occasion cake. You can order let's say a Dragonball cake, and the front of the cake will look like the creator, Akira Toriyama, made it himself.

After admiring the sweets anime art, and buying our sweets, we headed home and couldn't wait to try what we bought.

Chocolate Mustache

Do yourself a favor and buy this chocolate mustache lollipop. Do you know how much fun it is to put that mustache in front of your upper lip and take a picture? If that isn't a great time I don't know what is. You also get a great smell of chocolate while you're at it. After picture time was over, biting into that milk chocolate mustache was wonderful. It was sweet but not overly sweet and the rich milk chocolate was heavenly. We are definitely getting this chocolate mustache again and possibly giving some to a few friends.

Canelé

I love canelés and this one did not disappoint. The hard-top chocolate part of the canelé with the nice soft spongy cakey inside of it is just like falling into a soft bed with freshly laundered sheets. Alain Marie, you get a thumbs up from both of us on your canelés.

Ramen or cake?

Now, the moment you have all been waiting for. Is it cake or ramen? It looks like ramen but as I am sure you have figured it out by now, it is cake. The beer is a dessert too! Ha ha! I bet you didn't see that coming! (You did, didn't you?)

The Beer

The beer was a soft sweet gelatin. The foam was this crystalized sugar and the gelatin was apple juice flavored. I thought it would have been beer-flavored but I wasn't complaining about the apple juice. It was a nice treat to have with our ramen cake.

Ramen Chestnut Cake

The ramen looked exquisite. The nori were small chocolate bars, the naruto was chocolate, and so was the negi. The noodles in the ramen were chestnuts. All in all, this was a small dessert and it tasted wonderful. The soup part of the ramen was not chestnut-flavored. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but then my wife said "I think it is black tea." She was right. It was black tea and it worked well with this dessert. The black tea kind of brought down the high sweetness of the chestnut cake.

My wife and I enjoyed our apple juice beer and chestnut ramen. We hope we can go back soon and try the other desserts and sweets on display. I also want to give a few friends that cake ramen to freak them out. Oh, and I want more chocolate mustaches. A lot more.

So if you are looking for some amazing cakes or sweets and are in the Matsushiro area of Tsukuba, why not check out Alain Marie Patisserie? Who knows, you might see me there, buying chocolate mustaches, getting more ramen cake, and admiring Sukuna's finger.

Enjoy!

For more information on Alain Marie Patisserie, check out their website:

https://www.patisserie-alainmarie.com/