When is a cream puff not a cream puff?
Answer: when it's a shucream, or a Japanese-French cream puff.
This is something essayist Joel Stein should have realized before penning his almost-clever March 29 column in Time magazine, "A New Fast-Food Invasion." After all, the distinction is central to Stein's argument that the ways other countries alter American fast-food institutions are indicative of how they view our culture. Explaining globalization's effect on our deep-fried, super-sized, double-stuffed cuisine, Stein writes, "The stuff you invented--in this culinary case, fast-food hamburgers, fried chicken, pizza and doughnuts--gets sent out into the world, is replicated by other countries and then comes back to you all crazied up, like a giant game of telephone. And if you hold that piece of Filipino fried chicken up to your ear and are really quiet, you can hear what the rest of the world thinks about us." As examples, Stein discusses the Philippines' take on McDonald's, Guatemala's version of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the convenience store and cream puff franchises of Japan.
I've never been to the Philippines, and I'm not familiar with how the Guatemalans like their chicken. However, I know my Japanese pastries -- better than Stein, it turns out.
Here's how Stein describes Beard Papa's, Japan's biggest and most popular purveyor of shucreams:
"Beard Papa's is the Dunkin' Donuts of Japan, only it has replaced fried dough with cream puffs on steroids. It opened its first U.S. store in 2003 and has been invading mall spots. Inside each store, Japanese women in uniforms push down on metal levers to plop rich, creamy custard mixed with whipped cream into oversize profiterole shells. Like so much of Japanese culture, Beard Papa's has taken our creation and refracted it through the mythological wholesomeness of America in the 1950s--which is just what you want fast-food dessert to taste like."
This may indeed what Americans want fast-food dessert to taste like. However, Beard Papa's puffs aren't American creations. Their history belongs to the French!
I don't know when the cream puffs first came to Japan (some sources say it was the late 19th century), but I do know that the Japanese have long been enamored by French cuisine, and have brought their signature passion, attention to detail and obsession with perfection to learning how to make it themselves (some even swear that the best French pastry chefs in the world are actually Japanese). Famous and frightfully expensive French patisseries can now be found all over Japan, and especially in Tokyo. In fact, the Japanese phrase for cream puff, "shucream," comes from the French terms, "choux à la crème." In an interview with a Columbia University student reporter, a Beard Papa's executive explained that the puffs are indeed rooted in French cuisine, and that the recipe, with its French "choux" inner shell, has been modified to appeal to Japanese tastes.
Stein does say that Beard Papa's "has replaced fried dough with cream puffs on steroids," so maybe he's dimly aware of the puff's French pedigree, and is focusing on the places in which they're sold, which he seems to think are distinctly American. The thing is, our Dunkin' Donuts are best known for their coffee -- as the name implies, their donuts are meant to be dunked. It's not uncommon to pop into a DD just for a hot cup of joe. But while Beard Papa's in the US often serve hot drinks, almost all of their patrons prefer the coffee to-go -- as mocha-flavored custard filling in a puff, not as a beverage in a cup! The only reason people visit BP's, both here and in Japan, is to pick up a puff (or six). And the shops are uniformly clean, cheerful and efficient because that's how Japanese people like their eating establishments to be (see Yoshinoya, CoCo Ichibanya curry, and Hachiban ramen).
So Beard Papa's is not a Japanese facsimile of Dunkin' Donuts, nor are their puffs take-offs on Boston creams. They actually have very little to do with US customs, culture or style. More accurately, the global franchise is made up of Japanese-style shops that sell modern, mass-market Japanese versions of classic French pastries. An interesting phenomenon, yes, but not at all in the way Stein describes. He claims that foreign fast-food can tell us what the rest of the world thinks of us. Unfortunately, he wasn't listening very carefully to what Beard Papa's was trying to say.