Sweets and Daily Joys by Confectionery Expert Igarashi Romi

What should you serve on your favorite tableware? What tableware should you choose for your favorite food? Time spent reflecting on such questions is very special. In this series, “Tales of Tableware,” our guests share their stories of the tableware and food they love. We also ask them about their lifestyle, passions, and dreams.
In this installment, we talk with confectionery expert Igarashi Romi

Making a living working with what I love

I got off the train at Kamakura Station and passed through a quiet residential neighborhood beyond the famous Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine. Then I went down a beautiful leafy lane, and the Atelier Bis Confectionery School came into sight. The school is run by Igarashi Romi of Romi-Unie, proprietor of the jam and baked confections shops Romi-Unie Confiture and Maison Romi-Unie. In the winter, the place becomes a chocolate shop under the name Chocolaté Romi-Unie. I rang the bell, and Romi welcomed me with a smile.

Romi-Unie Confiture in Kamakura stocks an extensive assortment of jams featuring exciting and unusual combinations of ingredients. Strawberry, mint, and black pepper. Fig and cassis. Blueberry and lemon peel. The store’s simple yet visually appealing baked confections, too, each have their own charm. You find yourself spoilt for choice.

Owner Igarashi Romi now operates several stores that attract a large clientele. She also runs her own confectionary school and writes extensively. Before becoming a confectionery expert, however, she faced many choices in life.

“I’ve loved confections ever since I was a child. When I was in high school, I chose to work part-time at a French pâtisserie. Then I got a full-time job with ambitions of becoming a confectioner. But being a confectioner involves hauling around heavy loads of flour and other ingredients, and you have to be nimble too. I soon realized that it wasn’t for me. Still, I found it sheer bliss telling customers at the store about our pastries and seeing the delight on their faces. So I started seriously thinking about how I could make a living working with what I loved: confectionery.”

If you’re into interior design, you have plenty of options. You can become an interior coordinator or stylist or architect. But the only way to pursue a career in confectionery, Romi realized, is to become a confectioner. After pondering long and hard over what it was she really loved, she decided to head to France to study confectionery at the source. She would choose the right career for herself after acquiring a thorough grounding in confectionery, she thought. As long as she worked hard enough at what she loved and did well, light would surely appear at the end of the tunnel.

In France, she studied in Strasbourg and Paris. In the course of learning about confectionery and sampling France’s many regional cakes and pastries, she discovered the country’s delicious confitures — French for jam. That fateful encounter paved the way for her subsequent career as a confectionery expert and the launch of Romi-Unie Confiture.

Baked goods, tea, and marmalade opened new doors.

Having feasted on all the confections France had to offer during her studies there, Romi next fell in love with Britain’s baked goods and its culture of tea.

“British baked goods are plain and simple, with a very floury taste. Eating them with a cup of tea with milk was a novel experience for me, since I was so used to French cakes and pastries.”

Romi had a vintage English plate and teacup ready at hand for this feature.

“I bought these at a shop in London called Vintage Heaven, which is located on the road where the Columbia Flower Market is held. It’s only open on weekends, and it has stacks of tableware from the fifties and sixties on sale. I never fail to visit the place when I’m in London, since I always manage to find dishes with colors, shapes, and patterns that appeal to me. One of the things I enjoy is going there in the morning and spending a leisurely three hours choosing plates and cups.”

“Many of the dishes at Vintage Heaven can be had for about a thousand yen each,” says Romi, “so when I’m visiting Britain, I bring packaging with me from Japan [laughs] and buy whole sets to take home.”

Vintage Heaven has a tearoom at the back of the shop where you can enjoy tea in vintage crockery.

“Six or seven years ago, I got into a nice chat with the proprietress of Vintage Heaven. She said she would soon be visiting Japan, so I told her that Kamakura was a great town, and I had my own jam shop there. I happened to have some jars of pomelo marmalade with me that day to give various friends, and I gave one to her.”

The proprietress then said, “Come to think of it, I read in the newspaper yesterday about something called the Marmalade Awards. Why don’t you try entering next year?”

Romi continues.
“When the subject of marmalade came up, the person next to me said, ‘I make marmalade as well, you know,’ and soon a lively conversation was in full swing. That was a fun time. Awards and competitions hadn’t interested me much until then, but what happened that day really stuck in my mind. I figured maybe I should enter the competition.”

Romi wondered what the British would think of Romi-Unie marmalade.
“Marmalade is a form of jam made with citrus peel, and the British love it. Many of them have very definite opinions on marmalade. They know exactly how bitter they like it and what thickness of peel is just right.”

Marmalade for the British is perhaps like umeboshi (pickled plums) for the Japanese, Romi observes. In Japan, people have their own preferences when it comes to how sour or salty umeboshi should be. They may insist that mom’s umeboshi are the best in the world, or have their own thoughts on whether umeboshi should be made using honey. It’s much the same with marmalade in Britain, Romi says. She wanted to know how Romi-Unie marmalade would be received in the marmalade capital of the world.

“I was so busy the next year that I let the opportunity slip by. But two years after learning about the Marmalade Awards, I entered my grapefruit marmalade in the contest. Then one day when I’d almost forgotten I’d even entered, I received a notice that Romi-Unie marmalade had won the gold. I was thrilled. I’ve tried my luck again several times since, and my circle of fellow marmalade enthusiasts in Japan has grown in the process. I told the proprietress on another visit to London several years later, and she was delighted. Meeting people on my travels has allowed me to form new connections. That’s a really exciting thing, and it’s a source of inspiration.”

Confections are such fun, even after all these years!

Such are Romi’s memories of Vintage Heaven, from which she brought home the teacup and plate featured here. She served me a tea with milk in the teacup and a scone on the plate. The scone, made with richly flavored flour, cultured butter, and fresh cream, is a big favorite at her confectionery school. Slightly crisp on the outside and moist on the inside, it was accompanied by jam made with caramel, cultured butter, and salt. It went perfectly with a cup of tea.

“The tea and baked goods they serve at a tearoom taste excellent. When you visit a church bazaar in England, you come across simple, honest confections home-baked by local mums. The supermarkets, too, stock the kind of delicious biscuits and baked goods that the locals always eat. When I come across confections that are an integral part of people’s lives, and they’re just like what I once read about in a book, I feel a special connection to the place. It fires me up [laughs].

“This scone is inspired by the taste of one I happened on in a London supermarket. I wanted to recreate the scone I had that day, so I came up with the right combination of ingredients, and I’ve been making it for sixteen years since.”

The cup has a lovely color, and when tea is poured in it, and a nicely browned scone is served on the plate, everything comes together in a harmonious whole.

“Serving something this way certainly lifts your mood, right?” says Romi with a smile.
I ask her whether there are certain things she looks for when choosing tableware and other items.

“I like things that are cute but not too cute,” she replies. “Cute without being fancy.”
That aesthetic is mirrored in the packaging of Romi-Unie’s jams and cookies.

“I’ve always loved things that are simple yet cute. That’s never changed. Packaging has to be practical, but at the same time, I also ask myself how to make it look cute. Tasting good and looking cute, looking cute and tasting good — that’s always what matters most to me. I guess it’s what I’ve been aiming for all these years.”

Romi-Unie gift boxes. So adorable the recipient will want to put them on display.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Romi explains, “but what I always have in mind is the right balance of cuteness, the right balance of flavor.”

Romi has always been true to what she loves. She has nurtured it into a deeply held set of convictions, without ever losing her sense of proportion. That was the impression I got from the inner strength that occasionally broke through her friendly smile as she spoke.

“There are things I’ve never stopped loving, and jam is one of them. I still have this urge to tell everyone to make jam. It’s such fun, and it’ll turn out tasting great. I want to share many more flavors of jam. Even now, when I’ve been at it for so long, that desire hasn’t disappeared. Confections are such fun, even after all these years!”