Japanese social networks today experienced a Christmas drama at dawn, flooded with complaints due to hundreds of Christmas cakes that arrived deformed to those who had ordered them, an incident that became the most read news of the day.
The Takashimaya department store chain, where 2,900 people bought online this year the traditional cream and strawberry cakes that are consumed in Japan at Christmas, had received 530 reports of crumbled cakes as of today afternoon and it is expected that the figure increase in the next few hours.
The drama of the cakes was the most read news this morning on the public broadcaster NHK and other national media, and from the first hour the topic was a trend on the Japanese networks with various labels, including statements by the chef in charge of supervising the sweet, who He was “very disappointed” with the case.
Takeyoshi Watanabe, the chef and owner of the French restaurant Les Sens, who spent a year working on the preparation of the cake, shared his discomfort with the television network Nihon TV and explained that the company that prepares the cake usually delivers them frozen to the delivery company, which then stores them in a freezer before delivering them to the buyer.
The cake, which sells for 5,400 yen (about 34 euros), consists of a rich layer of cream with undulating ruffles on the sides and has been prepared in the same way for the last five years, without major incidents.
The prestigious department store, through which reservations were made, carefully controlled the number of orders so as not to exceed the production capacity of the bakers.
Hundreds of customers have received their cakes crumbled or deformed and expressed their disappointment on the networks, some of them attaching photographs of the culinary horror, which went viral in a few hours on a day of relative information calm.
“At this time of Christmas, for which we made a cake with a lot of effort so that people could eat the best, I feel sorry” that something like this has happened, Watanabe said.
Takashimaya apologized in a statement for the inconvenience and said it would contact each customer individually to ask about the status of their cakes upon receipt and handle any returns.