My eldest sister knows so many great gourmet food everywhere, but then my middle sister knows all kinds of great coffee. One of the coffee places she recommended was Komeda’s Coffee. She was kind enough to take us there on one weekend. They are celebrating their 50th anniversary, very impressive! They have hundreds of locations throughout Japan. We went to one in Tokyo, located on the second floor in Asano Building.
When we got to the second floor, they had some wait, as they are quite popular. Some more people came after us, and some stayed while some decided not to wait. The wait area was really small and kind of awkwardly arranged, there was barely enough space for people to leave the coffee shop with the people waiting right around there.
Interior was spacious and bright with lots of natural light coming in from large windows. Cozy and comfortable atmosphere, with wood and red brick throughout. When our name was finally called, we walked over to one of the window seats. They had this white button on each table, which is used to call your server when you are ready to order or if you need something. Many of Japanese restaurants have this, and I wish if they are also installed at all restaurants in NYC…
I am more of a tea person than coffee, but I do appreciate a good cup of coffee, especially with milk. I ordered Café au Lait (420 yen). It came in a light brown-ish colored cup. It was really good cup of coffee, deep and aromatic, with added smooth creamy-ness from milk. I really liked it! My sister who likes to have her coffee with no milk and no sugar, went with Blended Coffee (400 yen). It is their traditional coffee blend, carefully extracted from selected beans. With this cup, you can really appreciate the flavor of coffee beans. Very robust, high quality, and strong without being too bitter.
My husband went with Iced Coffee (400 yen). It is pre-sweetened, but you can ask for unsweetened or with syrup on the side if you prefer. It came in a cool looking silver tin cup, with a tiny little thing of milk, which we thought was adorable. It was again really good, high quality, rich and flavorful. Each coffee came with a small packet of bean snacks.
They are called “Calorie Beans” and not because they have crazy high calories, but they help burn calories when consumed with coffee! Who knew! It is said that these bean combined with caffeine produce certain reaction in your body that promotes calorie burn. They are also tasty with nice amount of salty flavor, and natural sweetness of the beans. It can be pretty addictive. If you want more, you can ask for another packet for 10 yen.
Now that we are burning some calories just by eating these babies with coffee, we were ready for some sweets!!! I don’t know if that is how it should work, but that is what I want to believe… So, we ordered one of their most popular sweets, and also their signature item called Shiro-Noir. Since we had a big brunch not too long before we got here, we ordered just one Mini Shiro-Noir (400 yen) to share. It come with Danish Pastry, Soft Serve Ice Cream, and Syrup. Match made in heaven, I say.
The round Danish Pastry is served warm, topped with cold ice cream. The Danish is nice and thick, with crunchy exterior and soft and fluffy inside. The amount of ice cream was pretty great, it does start to melt quickly since it is placed on top of warm pastry. And the syrup…pouring the syrup on the slowly-melting-white-sweetness over fluffy cake…my goodness, it was pure dessert porn!
And the taste? Yes it was as good as it looked. The combination of warm Danish pastry with cold ice cream was really nice, and the syrup drizzled over them added extra flavor and sweetness. The Danish pastry was sweet but not too sweet, so the sweetness from ice cream and syrup didn’t feel like too much of sugar. The texture was really nice, fluffy yet dense, really satisfying. We enjoyed them a lot!
My niece, the sweetest and adorable girl in the world (I might be biased, but still, she is so cute!) ordered Summer special dessert, Mini Matcha Kakigori (500 yen). We got a little taste of it, and it was pretty darn good. The shaved ice was almost fluffy, with nice green tea flavor. She added condensed milk (70 yen) on top, which gave nice sweetness and creamy texture.
They have bathroom at the back corner, just one for men and one for women. It was bit small, but very clean and well maintained. And yes, ToTo Toilet.
We had a really nice afternoon coffee time with my sister and my niece. I say both my sisters really know tasty places! Since my husband really likes coffee, he was very happy to find another great coffee shop in Japan, and since they have so many locations, it is not hard to get to when we are in Japan. They had so many other delicious looking coffee drinks, I would love to go back again and try some more next time we are in Japan!
Komeda’s Coffee – 1 Chome-8-2 Kichijoji Honcho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo Japan
コメダ珈琲店 – 東京都武蔵野市吉祥寺本町1-8-2 吉祥寺浅野ビル 2F