Takahachi Japanese Bakery in Tribeca: Matcha Cakes From $40

Takahachi Bakery, at 25 Murray St between Church Street and Broadway, is the Japanese bakery that downtown office workers have been quietly relying on since 2010. It is a small, bright room on a block of City Hall back entrances and lunch counters, and it sells the things a neighborhood pan-ya in Tokyo would: soft milk breads, filled buns, matcha sweets and whole decorated cakes. It opens Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 6 pm and Saturday 9 am to 6 pm, and it stays closed on Sunday.

The bakery belongs to Hiroyuki Takahashi, who had already been running Takahachi, his sushi restaurant on Duane Street, since 2002. When Tribeca Citizen covered the opening in June 2010, Takahashi said he wanted to provide healthy, safe food, and the shop launched with about 60 rotating breads made by a team of ten bakers, many of them working in the basement beneath the counter.

The pastry side is led by Naoko Mabuchi, who was born in Tokyo, trained at the French Culinary Institute and spent more than eight years at Bouley before Takahachi appointed her executive pastry chef in June 2010. That background explains the menu's split personality. Half of the case reads like a Paris patisserie, with mousse cakes and gateau au chocolat, and the other half is built on Japanese ingredients such as matcha, kinako, yuzu, black sesame and red bean.

The room itself was described at opening as wood floors, exposed brick and chalkboard menus, with a window into the baking area and 13 small tables. It is not a lingering cafe in the Brooklyn sense. Most customers come in, load a tray and leave within ten minutes, which is exactly why it works as a quick stop between the courthouses and the subway.

Takahachi runs the self-service system you find in Japanese bakeries. Pick up a tray and a pair of tongs near the door, walk the shelves, and choose what you want before carrying everything to the register. If you have never shopped this way, the only rule that matters is to keep fingers off the bread and let the tongs do the work.

Tribeca Citizen's opening report described a rotating lineup rather than a fixed list, so the shelves are worth a slow lap before you commit. Early visitors get the widest choice of soft rolls and sweet buns, while late afternoon suits anyone collecting a whole cake. The daily sandwiches and salads are the reason the room fills up around lunch, when the nearby offices and courthouses empty out onto Church Street.

Matcha is the house obsession, and the best single-portion expression of it is the green tea crepe. The Infatuation called it strong on the matcha flavor, filled with light cream and red bean, and wrapped in parchment printed like newspaper so it can be eaten on the walk back to work. Serious Eats, in a write-up the bakery still quotes on its own site, singled out the mochi an-pan, a matcha-dusted bun stuffed with mochi and red bean paste.

For drinks, the official menu lists a matcha latte at $4.50 for 12 ounces and $5.00 for 16 ounces, a honey yuzu tea at $4.00, and hoji and genmai teas at $2.50 for the smaller size. A plain 8-ounce coffee is $1.90, one of the cheapest cups in the area. Pair a roasted hoji tea with anything that has red bean in it, since the toasty tea cuts through the sweetness better than espresso does.

Whole cakes are where Takahachi separates itself from the chain bakeries. The six-inch souffle cheesecake is $34, the six-inch strawberry shortcake is $38, and the Kyoto matcha mousse cake starts at $40 for a 5 1/2 inch square that serves six to nine people. The showpiece is the matcha mille crepe, 20 layers stacked two and a half to three inches tall, which costs $70 for a ten-inch cake meant for about ten people.

The quietest windows are the first half hour of a weekday and the middle of the afternoon, after the lunch crowd has gone back upstairs. Saturday mornings are calm because the surrounding government offices are closed, and that is the best time to browse slowly and ask about the cake case. Because the doors stay shut on Sunday, anyone planning a weekend birthday cake should collect it on Saturday.

For a whole cake, order ahead rather than hoping one is sitting in the case, especially the mille crepe and the larger shortcakes, which run up to $210 for an 11 by 17 inch sheet with extra fruit. The official site lists the sizes, prices and serving counts, so you can choose the right size before calling 212-791-5550.

Murray Street is a few minutes from City Hall Park, where the benches around the fountain are a good place to eat a bun on a dry day. From there, the Woolworth Building's gothic tower rises over Broadway, and the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian entrance is a short walk east if you want to burn off the cake.

Heading west instead takes you along Murray toward the Hudson and the riverfront paths of Battery Park City. If you liked the bakery and want dinner from the same family, the Takahachi sushi restaurant is a few blocks north on Duane Street, where the menu leans on the same Japanese ingredients in savory form.

Address: 25 Murray St, New York, NY 10007, in Tribeca near City Hall. Phone: 212-791-5550. Hours: Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 6 pm, Saturday 9 am to 6 pm, closed Sunday. The closest trains are the 2 and 3 at Park Place, one block away, and the R and W at City Hall on Broadway.

Seating is limited to a handful of small tables, so plan on takeout at lunch. The bakery also offers soy milk for $0.50 and almond or coconut milk for $0.75 in its drinks. If you are visiting with friends who do not eat sweets, the rotating sandwiches and soups make it an easy place to agree on, and the Karpo APP can point you to the next stop once your tray is empty.