LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR - The Bakery That Taught Me to Look Beyond the Bread

I first visited LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR on 20 May 2016.

It was my first trip to Japan, and LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR was the first bakery I visited there. At that time, I did not know how much that place would stay with me. I only knew I was drawn to it — not only because of the bread, but because of the whole feeling of the bakery.

Only later did I realise that I had arrived on the very day it opened its doors in Kitashinchi. The shop was full of people. Everything felt new, but the bakery already had a strong presence.

Because it was so crowded that day, we returned again the next day.

LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR, first visit, 2016

That second visit stayed with me even more.

At that time, they still served bread on plates with cutlery. The service was gentle, careful, and very attentive. There were three of us, and when our order arrived, the team even cut each item into three portions so that we could share everything easily.

It was such a small gesture, but I still remember it.

Later, when I read how LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR spoke about bread, I understood that this was not accidental. They saw bread as something that connects people, ingredients, and makers — something warm, simple, and shared. A bakery may look like a shop, but it has an openness that receives people easily. Customers can come in casually, eat something, and still feel the thoughts of the people behind the product.

That was what I felt during that visit. The bread was not treated as something to simply buy and eat. It was served with care, almost like part of a course in a restaurant.

Even now, after visiting many bakeries over the years, I still consider that one of the best bakery experiences I have ever had.

LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR, plated service, 2016

I returned again in 2019, then in 2023, and again in 2025. Each time, the shop had changed slightly. The renovation felt different. The retail display had shifted. The way products were presented had evolved. But the spirit remained recognisable.

What stayed with me was not only the main character.

It was the supporting cast.

The interior.
The bread series.
The sandwiches.
The coffee.
The retail shelves.
The small add-on products.

Everything felt considered. Nothing felt separate. The bread, the space, the service, and the rhythm of the shop all seemed to belong to the same world.

LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR, 2019

In 2019, I wrote a note to myself:

Do not only pay attention to the main character.
Look clearly at the supporting characters too, and think.
【不只看主角，也要看懂配角，并且思考】

That thought stayed with me.

Later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Croisserie went through its second major renovation, LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR became one of the places I kept returning to in my mind. Not to copy it, but to understand how a bakery could carry a complete point of view.

With Chef Ayumu Iwanaga, 2016

Watching Chef Iwanaga speak about the closing of the Kitashinchi store made me understand that place even more deeply.

He said he creates things that satisfy him first. Not because customers are unimportant, but because a baker must first know what he truly believes in. Taste has to be trained. The palate has to be sharpened. Before trying to please others, the baker has to understand what he himself can stand behind.

That moved me.

Because I think a bakery becomes weak when it only asks, “What will sell?”

Of course, a bakery must survive. It must understand customers, cost, operation, timing, and consistency. But if everything begins only from demand, the product loses its reason for being. It becomes something made to answer the market, rather than something made from conviction.

Chef Iwanaga’s thinking feels different.

First, make something you believe in.
Then work seriously to help that value reach the customer.

That second part is important. He was not saying, “I make what I like, and customers must accept it.” He understood that if his bread did not immediately resonate, he had to communicate. He had to write. Even if the words were imperfect, he had to keep writing, so people could understand the feeling behind the bread.

That is how I see his blog.

It was not just marketing.
It was part of the bread.

Through writing, he slowly created the kind of customer who could understand the bakery. Not everyone. The right people. People who were willing to come not only for bread, but for bread made by someone with a certain belief, supported by a team who shared that philosophy.

That, to me, is one of the strongest lessons.

Chef Ayumu Iwanaga, 2025

Marketing is not only about attracting more people.
It is about slowly reaching the people who understand what we are trying to do.

A bakery should not only sell something good. It should create something that can only be found there.

Even if the bread could be enjoyed elsewhere, that particular space had its own meaning. The atmosphere, the display, the team, the way customers waited, and the way the bread became part of the whole experience — all of it made the place feel irreplaceable.

That is what LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR felt like to me.

I also felt this in the way Chef Iwanaga spoke about working with restaurants. He did not treat bread as something simply supplied to another kitchen. It had to belong to the meal. It had to understand the chef, the cuisine, the table, and the role it was meant to play beside the food.

In that sense, a bakery can become a kind of interpreter — between bread, ingredients, suppliers, chefs, and the people who come to eat. That way of thinking resonates with me. Bread does not always have to stand alone. Sometimes its strength is in how it supports something else — how it carries a sauce, balances a filling, frames a dish, or completes the experience at the table.

All of this made the closing feel heavier to me.

Chef Iwanaga said he had devoted his entire 40s to that store, both professionally and personally. He said that what he meant by “giving up” was not giving up on the shop or the staff, but on himself. He spoke about despairing at his own lack of talent, and about keeping himself and the shop going just to reach the ten-year mark.

Those words were painful to hear.

Because from the outside, we often see only the beauty of a bakery. The bread. The line of customers. The reputation. The finished space.

But behind it, there is another reality.

Scale.
Labour.
Production.
Sales pressure.
Quality control.
Staff morale.
The body of the chef.
The emotional weight of continuing.

LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR, 2023

The Kitashinchi store was larger than before. It demanded a different production method, a different rhythm, and a different level of business pressure. He tried many things. He adjusted. He pushed. Even when customer numbers or sales declined, he still wanted to overwhelm people with quality.

That is not failure.

That is someone trying not to betray the standard he had set for himself.

I understand that feeling in my own way.

In bread, there is always something unfinished. Even when a product is commercially acceptable, even when customers enjoy it, there can still be a small distance between the bread in front of me and the bread I imagine in my heart.

Bread is alive. It changes with flour, water, temperature, fermentation, timing, hands, and the condition of the day. The same method does not always give the same result. A baker can guide the dough, but cannot fully control it.

Maybe that is why I keep returning to bakeries like LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR.

Not only to see what they make, but to understand how they think.

How does a bakery build its own world?
How does a baker train his own taste without becoming closed off?
How does a shop communicate its belief until the right customers understand it?
How does a team carry the same philosophy every day?
How does a bakery grow, change, and still remain itself?

In the end, what touched me most was not only Chef Iwanaga’s frustration, but his gratitude.

He said the staff helped lift him out of despair. He said that because of them, he was able to become a chef who ran a bakery in that location for ten years.

That humility stayed with me.

A bakery is never only one person. Even if the vision begins with the chef, the shop is carried by many hands. The people who mix, bake, serve, clean, explain, repeat, endure, and return again the next day — they become part of the philosophy too.

LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR, last visit, 2025

When I think back to my first visit in 2016, I still remember the team cutting each item into three portions.

It was a small act.

But perhaps that is exactly why it remained.

A great bakery is not built only through grand gestures. Sometimes it is built through quiet details that tell the customer: we have thought about how you will experience this.

That is what I learned from LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR.

Not only how bread can be made.
But how a bakery can be composed.

The main character matters.
But the supporting cast gives the story its depth.

The closing of LE SUCRÉ-CŒUR Kitashinchi does not feel like the end of its philosophy. In some ways, it made the philosophy clearer.

A bakery is not remembered only for what it sells.
It is remembered for what it stands for.

And sometimes, even after a place closes, the way it made me think continues to shape the work I do with my own hands.