Beard Papa’s puts Wichita first, not last, in cream puff line

Beard Papa’s cream puffs are renowned in San Francisco and Hollywood. They’re coming soon to Washington, D.C., and Boston.

People love them in Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea.

And in Wichita.

Local businessman Jack Fukuda, a native of Japan, persuaded the Beard Papa’s chain to let him open the Midwest’s first store last fall, putting Wichita on a list with company it’s not used to keeping. So far, there are 26 Beard Papa’s stores in the United States – in California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and New York City.

Fakuda chose Towne East, he said, because he wanted to be in a mall setting but didn’t want to contend with the unpredictability of weather at open-air malls like Bradley Fair and NewMarket Square.

Beard Papa’s was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1999. It specializes in customizable cream puffs stuffed with a variety of filling flavors, and in Wichita, the menu keeps growing.

▪  On the menu: Beard Papa’s main focus is its fresh-filled cream puffs. When customers approach the counter, they will see a variety of cream puff shells baked and ready to fill. They choose which flavor they want piped inside, and each day, Beard Papa’s has two to choose from: vanilla and rotating flavors like strawberry, green tea and hazelnut.

In the months since he opened the store, Fukuda has gradually added other things to the menu. He now offers four types of sandwiches made with cream puff shells, “frozard puffs,” which are filled with frozen custard, and several flavors of Mochi ice cream, a Japanese confection made with an outside coating of pounded sticky rice and an ice cream filling.

Wichita’s Beard Papa’s also is becoming known for its mango ice shower, a dessert made by layering mango syrup, shaved ice, fresh mango chunks and condensed milk. And it offers eight flavors of boba tea, a full menu of coffee drinks, and beverage concoctions including Italian sodas, root beer floats and frappes.

▪  Don’t-miss dishes: The cream puffs at Beard Papa’s are decadent treats, though they’re light and airy, and the calorie count is not as bad as you might think. A standard vanilla custard-filled pastry ($2.25) has about 220 calories.

Customers can choose from a variety of pastry shells, then watch as the employees fill them from a special metal container and sprinkle them with powdered sugar.

Most of the shells are big – about the size of your fist – and the pastry is delicate and not too sweet. The filling has the texture and consistency of pudding.

On the day we visited, the two fillings available were strawberry and vanilla, and those flavors were just as good inside the plain pastry shell as they were in the chocolate flavored coco puff ($2.50) and the eclair puff topped with chocolate and almonds ($2.50). The chocolate pastries paired especially well with the strawberry filling.

Also available: Paris-Brest pastries ($2.45), which are wheel-shaped pastries that look like crullers and are half-dipped in chocolate, mini-puffs (five for $4.25), and chocolate fondant cakes ($3), which are cake on the outside, chocolate goo in the middle.

The cream puffs are a nice change of pace from typical dessert fare, and you’ll be the hero of the office or the baby shower if you bring in a box of Beard Papa’s instead of a tray of cookies or box of cupcakes. The drama of biting into the pastry and having the cream ooze into your mouth and onto your chin can’t be rivaled, and the puffs are as pretty as they are delicious.

The sandwiches were less successful. They’re available for $3.19 apiece or two for $5.99 and feature the original pastry shells stuffed with four choices of filling: spicy smoked turkey, tuna salad, roast beef or smoked ham. The fillings were fresh, and the pastry wasn’t too sweet to serve as bread. But it also wasn’t substantial enough to hold it all together. We tried the spicy turkey, topped with lettuce, tomato, American cheese, jalapenos and jalapeno mayo, and the roast beef with lettuce, tomato and Swiss cheese. Both were a little bland and too small to satisfy a typical lunch appetite. It’s probably better to grab a sandwich elsewhere then splurge on drinks and dessert at Beard Papa’s.

A must-try is the Mochi ice cream discs, which are colorful rounds in shades of pale green, pink, purple, yellow and brown. The pounded rice paper has a chewy texture that’s perfectly offset by the creamy ice cream inside. We tried the chocolate espresso, though they’re also available in lychee, green tea, pistachio, guava and more. They’re served fresh from the deep freeze and take a few minutes to reach a bite-able temperature.

▪  Ambience: The store is nothing more than a counter with several tables and chairs directly in front of it and nearby in the mall concourse. It’s tidy and nicely decorated with helpful, illustrated signage. And the pastry shells awaiting filling are piled dramatically high to tempt passersby.

▪  Price range: Cream puffs are $2.25 to $2.50 apiece. Sandwiches are $3.19. Drinks range from $1.85 for a basic coffee to $4.25 for a frappe.

▪  Service: The young man behind the counter had his job down. He was polite, knew all the answers to questions and filled orders quickly, despite being alone at the store.

This story was originally published October 1, 2014 at 12:29 PM with the headline "Beard Papa’s puts Wichita first, not last, in cream puff line."