The Time Capsules
The kissaten (traditional Japanese coffee shop) that scarcely any coffee traveller seems to know about is Ginza’s Café de l’Ambre — yet it’s still value a visit. Owned and operated by Ichiro Sekiguchi given 1948, this coffee-only investiture is a smoke-saturated, dimly lit, dark-wood-paneled wormhole to somewhere outward of a benefaction space-time.
Café de l’Ambre violates all a manners that your internal bean bro substantially binds sacred: All of a coffee, roasted in-house by a centenarian Sekiguchi, is many charred by imagination coffee standards, and during slightest a few of a beans during any given time have been aged for years (or decades) before being roasted. They’re afterwards brewed with a “nel drip” — suppose a pour-over with an aged sock for a filter — that is a customary kissaten brewing method. But any crater comes together so remarkably that even a edgiest coffee dork will have to contention to a simple deliciousness. So don’t be put off by a menu — a double-sided page of options sorted by preparation, quality, origin, and age — since a generally small distance of any portion means that we can representation during slightest a integrate of items. Try a curiously well-spoken two-decade-old Mocha or a honeyed Blanc et Noir, that is served over ice. Linger for a while, depending on your toleration for caffeine and cigarette fume — and squeeze a chair during a opposite if we can. 8-10-15 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 3571 1551 | www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~lambre
Of a some-more coffee-focused kissaten — they exist in overwhelming variety, and many are chronicled in fact in anthropologist Merry White’s Coffee Life in Japan — are Cafe Bach and Chatei Hatou (sometimes rendered as “Satei Hatou“). Both have turn favorites of Blue Bottle owners James Freeman, who has traded handsomely on his refined appreciation of Japanese coffee culture and paraphernalia. (In fact, not a small of complicated America’s coffee enlightenment has been alien from Japan — many of a primer coffee rigging we see in shops, from pour-over cones to siphon bars, is Japanese.) Each of these dual cafes offers a dizzying array of coffee beans to select from — all roasted in-house and hewing somewhat some-more to a ambience of a super-modern coffee drinker than l’Ambre’s roasts — as good as normal kissaten desserts, like consume cake. And while a series of kissaten in Japan has shrunk from a 1960s rise of 130,000 to around 80,000 as of a few years ago, new normal cafes still appear, like Coffee Tram, non-stop by a former worker of Daibo Coffee, an iconic shop that sealed in 2013. (If we can’t make it to a kissaten, reading a Daibo Coffee Manual isn’t a misfortune substitute.) Cafe Bach: 1-23-9 Niigatae, Taito-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 3875 2669 | www.bach-kaffee.co.jp | Chaitei Hatou: 1-15-19 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 3400 9088 | no website | Coffee Tram: 1-7-13 Ebisunishi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 5489 5514 | www.small-axe.net/coffee
Distinctly Tokyo Coffee
Outside Japan, Bear Pond Espresso is substantially a many obvious of Tokyo’s new call of coffee shops. This is overdue as many to the stone ‘n’ hurl style of owners Katsuyuki Tanaka as a duly heralded and unusual espresso, that is as unenlightened as soppy petrify and dim as qualification chocolate. While Tanaka once pulled shots for a flagship Angel Stain — an untouched dab of espresso in a demitasse — until a early afternoon, he now usually serves 10 a day, definition you’ll need to line adult before a emporium opens to get one. But “The Dirty,” done with a same muddy, chocolatey espresso and ice cold milk, is a happy satisfaction prize. The vibe of emporium can feel a small intimidating yet — one of a reduction desirable holdovers from a mid-2000s New York City coffee stage that desirous Tanaka. 2-36-12 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 5454 2486 | www.bear-pond.com
On a other finish of a cult-coffee scale, a loose environment and still truth of Eiichi Kunitomo’s Omotesando Koffee earned it rapturous accolades until it sealed in 2015. Kunitomo is now behind in a same space with Koffee Mameya, that is some-more bean purveyor than bone-fide cafe. The far-reaching preference of whole-bean coffees on offer — from roasteries in and outward of Japan, including Australia and a U.S. — are also accessible brewed as espresso or season coffee. If that sounds too neat and peaceful, cruise a skateboard and genocide steel vibes during a strange plcae of Arise Coffee Roasters, that also offers a towering series of coffees, all roasted in a shop. Koffee Mameya: 4-15-3 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 5413 9422 | www.koffee-mameya.com | Arise Coffee: 1-13-8 Hirano, Koto-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 3643 3601 | www.arisecoffee.jp
Meghan McCarron
The Fancy Coffee You Know, But Maybe Better
Tucked divided in a still residential area, Switch Coffee churns out unblemished easily roasted coffee in a space that feels some-more like a seminar than a cafe. If you’re looking for a transparent countenance of complicated coffee during a many tasty and unpretentious, it would be tough to do many improved than Switch, that serves engaging coffees, purify roasts, accurate brews, and not many else. In a identical vein, and with a identical name, is Glitch Coffee Roasters. Switch Coffee: 1-17-23 Meguro, Meguro-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 6420 3633 | www.switchcoffeetokyo.com | Glitch Coffee: 3-16, Kanda-Nishikicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 5244 5458 | www.glitchcoffee.com
About Life is an outpost from Onibus Coffee that amounts to small some-more than a window in a side of a building off a bustling travel in Shibuya. It offers espresso drinks done with beans from mixed roasters, Japanese and otherwise, and repared with a loose fastidiousness. Drinking coffee on one of a unclosed outward benches, set opposite a circuitously alleyway wall, somehow feels like you’ve slipped into a small burble star where we can demeanour out onto a travel and see all going on, yet no one can utterly make out that you’re there. 1-19-8 Dogenosaka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 6809 0751 | www.about-life.coffee
The Roastery by Nozy Coffee in Harajuku is typically remarkable for a concentration on single-origin coffees. The comparatively atmospheric cafe, finish with an expanded outside area, feels among a many American of Tokyo’s imagination coffee shops. Espresso drinks are done in a core station, and a preference of a coffees are accessible as pour-over from a apart opposite in a back. 5-17-13 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 6450 5755 | nozycoffee.jp
If we occur to feel dejected by your knowledge during Bear Pond (perhaps we missed a Angel Stain), it’s value creation a brief travel to a circuitously Dear All, a pleasant, natural-light-filled box of a coffee shop. Solid coffee from Single O forms a fortitude for cappuccinos and cortados with Instagram-ready latte art, while a ideally block buttered toast will substantially solve whatever other problems we have for a moment. When it’s not crowded, Fuglen, a mid-century Norwegian vital room anticipation done real, can feel likewise restorative. Dear All: 1-59-5 Sasazuka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | no phone | www.dearalltokyo.com | Fuglen: 1-16-11 Tomigaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo | +81 03 3481 0884 | www.fuglen.com
THAT CANNED LIFE
Or we can forget all of this and squeeze a canned coffee from any preference store or vending machine. Unlike a coolers of an normal American preference store, with a unhappy rows of Starbucks milkshakes and exxxtremely edgy overcaffeinated Monster coffee cans, even a many simple Japanese conbini has a superb rainbow of canned coffee beverages, trimming from true black to varying degrees of honeyed and tawny — and many are even accessible hot. (If we wish a lot of divert and sugar, try one of a cafeteria lattes in cosmetic sippy cups and welcome your middle baby.) Canned coffee isn’t amazing, yet it costs around ¥100 and does a job. Sometimes that’s all we need.
Matt Buchanan is Eater’s facilities editor.
