Tonari Bageri

This is Word of Mouth, where we find passionate people cooking what they love and show you how to get it. Truly unique Japanese style bakes, and genuinely hard to find anywhere else in the city.

The place

Tonari Bageri is Joey. She grew up with these breads in Singapore, found them again in the neighbourhood bakeries of Japan, and started baking them herself when she could not find them in Copenhagen. Tonari means "next door" in Japanese, and that is the whole idea: the bakery around the corner that knows what you want before you ask.

For now there is no corner. Joey bakes from a professional kitchen, sells by pre-order, and hands the boxes over at a pick-up spot in the middle of the city. She has popped up at cafés and squares around town too, and the plan is a permanent shop. Until then, this is how you get it.

What we ate

We start with the garlic cream cheese shio pan. Crunchy bottom, creamy center and lots of garlic, but perfectly balanced. It does not knock you over. It just makes you reach for the next one.

The melon pan is all about texture. A sugary cookie crust on top that cracks when you bite, and soft, pillowy bread underneath. The name comes from that crust, which looks like the skin of a melon.

Then the black sesame mochi cookie. Soft and chewy, and hidden in the middle is a piece of mochi filled with black sesame paste. Deep and nutty, and the chew inside the chew is the best part.

The classic shio pan is the one to judge a Japanese bakery by. Crisp on the outside, buttery and salty, and hollow in the middle, because the butter rolled inside melts away during baking and leaves a pocket behind. Simple, and very hard to stop eating.

Next, the anko butter shio pan. A shio pan filled with red bean paste they make themselves, a cold slab of butter and black sesame on top. Sweet beans, cold salty butter, warm bread. That combination exists for a reason.

Lastly, the cakes. Tonari makes cakes for any celebration, and the one we had was a matcha cake, creamy, light and not too sweet, with a face on it that makes it very hard to cut. Cakes are only made to order.

One tip from the caption that actually matters: reheat the shio pan at 180 degrees for three minutes in the oven or the air fryer. The outside crisps up again and the inside goes soft, like it just came out.

How to get it

Bread is pre-order only. The order form drops on their Instagram about a week before each pick-up, and pick-up is on selected Fridays, a few times a month, from 17:00 to 17:30 at Nørreport Station, outside McDonald's. Follow @tonari.bageri so you see the form when it opens, because the dates are announced there.

On the menu: the classic shio pan at 30 kroner, the garlic cream cheese and anko butter shio pans at 42, the melon pan and the black sesame mochi cookie at 38, and a shokupan loaf at 75 if you want Japanese milk bread for the week.

Cakes need to be ordered at least five days ahead. Pick them up at Ryparken Station, or have them delivered for a fee. Write to contact@tonaribageri.com.

This visit was sponsored.

Who it is for

Anyone who has had a real shio pan in Japan or Singapore and has been looking for one in Copenhagen since. Anyone with a birthday coming up who wants a cake people will talk about. And anyone who walks through Nørreport on a Friday afternoon anyway. Order one of everything, eat the shio pan on the train, and save the rest for the oven at home.

Japanese bread done properly, half an hour at a time.

But now… the real question is… where do we go next?