Let the season lead
Asako Iwayanagi’s desserts are admired far beyond Tokyo, yet her inspiration is disarmingly ordinary: a chat with a customer, a wander on a day off. She opened her first pâtisserie in a residential pocket of the city, wanting it to be both the local cake shop and the place you go for a celebration parfait or the Christmas cake.
The business now spans four shops, three in Tokyo and one in Fukuoka, with three more on the way in Tokyo and Yamanashi. The star is the Parfait Bijou, a towering, jewel-like parfait that changes with the seasons and is built, without exception, on a sorbet and a gelato.
“Every Parfait Bijou follows the same foundation: one sorbet and one gelato.”
— Asako Iwayanagi
Why the machines matter
Iwayanagi believes gelato and chocolate, more than most pastry disciplines, live or die by the precision of the equipment. Great ingredients and a sound recipe only become something exceptional on outstanding machines, which is why her kitchens run on Carpigiani: a Maestro HE and batch freezers for the gelato, and a 191 Steel pouring soft serve into waffle cones. Anyone new to gelato production goes through Carpigiani Gelato University first, to learn the reasoning behind a recipe’s numbers and how balance shapes flavour.
The rest of the experience is just as considered. Her shops are designed in layers of grey so nothing competes with the colour on the plate. A new brand, MAISON AS, launched in 2026 to go right back to the soil and the growers, with an eye on building a food brand that lasts a century. And she is happily blurring sweet and savoury, turning vegetables such as asparagus into desserts, an approach she says is catching on across Asia.
For New Zealand pastry kitchens, the lesson is clear: let the season lead, pair every fruit with a gelato and a sorbet that lift it, and give the gelato the same care as the pastry. Think a Central Otago cherry parfait in summer, or feijoa and lime when autumn arrives.
