Mother Kurkku, Harajuku

The little Kurkku chain seems to be straddling all sorts of concepts, not in a bad way. There’re organic ingredients, hip atmosphere (turntables), cafe food, bar bottles, and a full restaurant, all in two places next to each other in an obscure bit of Jingumae. It was pleasant! Look at the web site and you’ll […]

Figaro, Aoyama

Bit of a dissapointment here – looking for a cafe to kill some time between lunch, shopping and dinner, this seemed like the obvious choice in Aoyama (since, for example, the Henri Le Roux cafe was packed to the rafters, and has nothing to do with him beyond the name anyway). For those few readers […]

Very Berry Cafe, Kyoto

A few curious things here. One is that the neighborhood of Kyoto behind the city hall has an abnormal number of modern, foreign restaurants and cafes mixed in with the old vegetable shops and paper stores. It’s quite nice, especially ‘Gokomachi street’ where we stayed. Another curious thing is the trend toward hyper-American cafes in […]

Le Jardin, Yoga

Setagaya Art Museum is good for a visit. It’s a healthy walk away from Yoga, and that healthy walk, if done properly on the smaller streets and not on the 6-lane monsters that cut through the area, will be almost unconscionably pleasant. It will include cobbled streets with architectural details at every corner, water features, […]

Tant Pour Tant, Tsukishima

Nothing follows monja like cake (?), so after lunching at Bambi and strolling around a bit more, it was time to enjoy a quiet coffee and a piece of cake in my maiden aunt’s living room. Not really, of course, but this cute cake shop has a second floor that features the owner’s landscape paintings […]

Pierre Herme, Shinjuku (Isetan)

Good question, isn’t it? Could things really taste better at the Paris headquarters of the various places whose macarons I regularly consume? This is the subject of obsessive debate in some quarters, but not here. We just eat. I suppose Pierre Herme is famous for all sorts of things. Evidently chief among them is the […]

Derriere, Nishi Azabu

After a large pizza lunch, what do you need? Coffee and cake! Derriere is a cute little cafe, ideal for ladies who lunch with their kids and bankers who don’t work on Tuesday afternoons. They have a big cooler full of beautiful, traditional-style cakes (4 types of chiffon! see the web site) and serve coffee […]