connect feast
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KO SASAKI SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 AFAR 81
STRONG BREW
Hospitality, bean geekery, and pastry: How Tokyo’s cof-
fee culture inspired an upstart American brand.
by Adam H. GrahamT
HE SMELL OF apple
pie and roasting coffee
beans fills the air inside
Café Bach, a 51-year-old
coffee shop in Tokyo’s rough-and-
tumble Minami-Senju neighbor-
hood. Café Bach is what many
young Tokyoites might describe
as “Shōwa.” Japan’s Shōwa era
(1926–1989) was marked by a pen-chant for imported concepts and
non-Japanese decor. At Café Bach,
staff in mint-green shirts serve
customers who sit, quietly sipping,
in bulky leather-and-wood chairs,
surrounded by dark wood wain-
scoting, as classical music plays in
the background.
I’m here this morning to meet
James Freeman, the founder ofCafé Bach, which spe-
cializes in pour-over
coffee, sources beans
from around the world
and roasts them in its
own factory.
Blue Bottle Coffee, the third-wave
Bay Area coffee company recently
purchased by Nestlé for an esti-
mated $500 million. We’re going
on a tour of some of his favorite
Tokyo coffee shops, and Café Bach
is not only at the top of his list but,
thanks to its legendary brewing
rituals, was also part of the inspi-
ration for his own coffee empire.
When I arrive, he’s seated, nur-
sing a Panama Don Pachi Natural
Geisha prepared by master barista
Koichi Yamada and chatting with
the café’s owner, Mamoru Taguchi.
At first glance, I don’t get the appeal
of the place. To me, it feels like a
Denny’s in need of a refurb. But as
Yamada meticulously hovers over
my Papua New Guinea grounds
with a gooseneck kettle and all the
seriousness of a nuclear physi-
cist, I slowly come around to its
locked-in-time ambience. The
volcanic, complex, and deeply
edifying brew is prepared in the
slow-drip, pour-over style, and
served in a wide-brimmed ce-
ramic cup with a white saucer.
I soon discover that Café Bach
is known as a kissaten—a tradi-
tional Japanese café with a hyper
focus on the craft of coffee—and
more specifically as a meikyoku
kissaten, a coffee lounge that
doubles as a place to listen to
music. Taguchi’s wife, Fumiko,
who studied pastry-making in
France, brings me a slice of warm,
American-style apple pie from
the bakery on the second level.
The thick, uneven mantle of but-
tery shortcrust is so imperfect
it’s perfect. This isn’t just coffee
and pie; it’s a master class in cof-
fee and pie. It’s also a place I can
imagine camping out for an hour
or two—which is what traditional
kissaten are all about.