The Pastel Frills of Frances Bakery

The Little Tokyo pastry shop called Frances is as pastel and pretty as a box of bonbons. A lavish Italian crystal chandelier sparkles overhead. Ornate moldings decorate the walls with graceful swags and flowers, cornucopias of fruit and poetic faces. And the counter holds old-fashioned, decorative tins and frilly baskets filled with cookies or fat marrons glaces (candied chestnuts) in tinted foil.

There are faux marble tables where one can sip coffee from flower-sprigged cups, sample pastries from English china plates and gaze out windows that just now are painted with lace and spring-like bouquets. The window treatment changes several times a year, in keeping with the seasons and holidays.

The romantic mood extends to the pink and gold heart-shaped seals that are affixed to purchases and the slim ribbons imprinted with tiny red hearts that are knotted around sacks of cookies.

Antiques on display include French and Italian furniture, Dresden plates and delicate cups and saucers. The room casts the spell of an 18th-Century palace, or a Victorian tearoom. It is not surprising to learn that an architect who designed opera houses in Europe worked on the concept.

Frou-frou aside, Frances is a thoroughly up-to-date business that supplies pastries to airlines, hotels and restaurants as well as to walk-in customers. In the nine years since the shop opened, praise for its wares has spread across the country. New Yorkers and Texans hunger for the crisp almond tuiles and the fruit tarts have been carried to Hawaii as gifts.

The proprietors are Itsuo Tachibana, who left Japan 20 years ago, and his wife, Fusako, who formerly ran an antiques shop in Los Angeles. The pastries are French, developed with the aid of a Japanese pastry chef brought from Paris as a consultant.

Tachibana has reworked some of the products to suit local tastes. Brioche failed to attract customers and has been dropped. Shell-shaped Madeleines, rejected as too small, have been redesigned into larger cakes. Even Tachibana’s determination to use only natural ingredients has occasionally been frustrated. The pinwheel design produced with natural strawberry filling as ornament for a domino cake turned off patrons because the strawberries became brown when cooked. Tachibana resorted to artificial red coloring to boost sales.

Europeans, not Americans, appreciate the rich Paris brest, which is filled with hazelnut and chocolate custards. A German-style chocolate cake also has eluded the American palate. This is hard to understand because the orange-flavored cake with its thick chocolate coating is irresistibly good. Fortunately, it has been retained.

More in keeping with American preferences are a luscious chocolate mousse cake and the two cheesecakes, one baked and the other unbaked. Deceptively light, they are made with cream cheese blended with whipped cream.

The counter also displays rum cakes, orange, pear and strawberry cakes, eclairs, pastry-filled swans, Napoleons and oval bread puddings called diplomats. Packed in cellophane sacks are small, plain cakes filled with almond paste, thin cookies topped with raisins, the almond-crusted tuiles and raisin safoures, which are almond-topped cookie sandwiches filled with butter cream and raisins.

A calorie counter’s nightmare? Not quite. Tachibana uses 20% less sugar in his pastries than would be employed in their European counterparts. Natural sweetness, chiefly from fruit, makes up the difference.

In order to see the full complement of baked goods, it is necessary to get to the shop by 10 a.m. Demand for the croissants (almond, chocolate or plain, lightly glazed with syrup), raisin rolls, apple turnovers and savory quiches is so great that by 11 a.m. they are generally gone.

Frances opens early enough for breakfast, and orange juice is available along with coffee, tea and other beverages. Prices range from 45 cents for a tiny fruit tart to $2.95 for an imposing Napoleon, topped with whipped cream and strawberries and trimmed with sliced almonds. Cheesecakes are $1.85 a slice, the chocolate mousse cake is $1.95, the chocolate eclairs are $1.15, and a sack of raisin safoures is $5.

Frances Bakery, 404 E. 2nd St . , Los Angeles (in Honda Plaza); (213) 680-4899. Open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday to 6 p.m. Cash or checks accepted. No credit cards. Park in Honda Plaza.