Restaurants

Our favorite alternative Japanese cream puffs can be found at this gorgeous Lomita Japanese bakery that resembles a high-class Tokyo tearoom. Keiko Nojima, the chef, a local South Bay girl, followed a course of study at the California Culinary Academy with a long apprenticeship in Japan, and her delicate concoctions — majestic cheesecake pyramids flavored with fresh orange peel, sesame blancmange with caramel, tiny chestnut-mousse montblancs, green-tea cakes — are marriages of Japanese flavors and Parisian structures, as beautiful as Ken Price ceramics. The cream puffs are especially good — airy, eggy pastries stuffed to order with blackish, sesame-flavored whipped cream and sprinkled with a sweet powder made of caramelized soy, a cream puff that takes full command. Nojima claims that sesame cream puffs are fairly common in Tokyo, but there is nothing remotely like them in Los Angeles. A Chantilly puff is a work of art.

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