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 with it. Some kind of crazy tradition in Japan, evidently, serving coffee with cake. Is the shop’s name amusing to anyone else?

Several types of mille-crepe (one with montblanc-style pureed chestnuts on top). 4 kinds of chiffon, all very tall and with very, very beautiful icing. Tiramisu cake. I had the ‘mahogany’ chiffon – felt like I had to order it after I asked the staff why it was called mahogany. Turns out it’s because the cake is chocolate. Get it? I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t look at all like mahogany. The neck of my first good banjo was mahogany, as is the body of my Anderson, and this cake looked nothing like either of those instruments. But it was a good cake, and the fresh-cream icing was thick, light and tasty.

I felt mildly hard-done-by when two coffees and one cake were Y1800, but that’s life in the big city.

Cake!!
03-3409-1385