Koffee Mameya in Tokyo, Japan

During my Japan trip, I’ve had a chance to visit the legendary Koffee Mameya, and I’m excited to share my experience! It’s located in Omotesando region of Tokyo — overall a dream area for a coffee nerd, where you can see yet another specialty coffee place every minute you keep on discovering its surroundings.

A Coffee Beans Store

The name of the shop literally translates as “coffee beans store”, which it indeed is, apart from being, you know, the magnet for coffee snobs like y’all from around the world.

As the story goes, it was founded by Eiichi Kunitomo, the same man who also founded @omotesando.koffee in London, hence the name. It gets even more dramatic: apparently, the original shop in Tokyo got bankrupted between these two events, and then he bought it back.

The shop is super tiny, and has almost no natural light. This is probably intentional so they could create a fancy lighting arrangement which looks really cool.

The Coffee Grid ™️

The experience goes like this: first, you are greeted by a fine gentleman in a white lab coat, who shows you The Coffee Grid ™️ — their beans selection, ordered by the roast level, from light to dark. I was surprised how many medium and dark roasted beans they had, but then I think it made sense and I’ll cover it in the end.

They only have third-party roasters, and in the first row only one of them was a Japanese one. The beans, however, are excellent: some rare Geishas and Sidras, experimental processes (not too dank), competition winners, etc.

Anyway, he helps you to pick the beans you’d like to try. It was a long trip (and a long queue, more on this later), so I picked 2 coffees for a pour over for myself, and 1 for my wife, and set myself a goal to buy a bag of beans.

Brewing and Chatting

Then you go to the counter to another fine gentleman in a white lab coat, who prepares your drink(s) right in front of you, while telling you stuff about them. Obviously, this is where I may or may not have become this annoying person who asks too many questions and makes too many comments. The barista of course was able to maintain a discussion and was quite helpful, but I felt like he was not used to the two way nerd conversation.

They use 90 degrees water straight from the tap filter, to make it more compatible with “normal” water people might use. Plus, in Japan the water is relatively soft, so the water TDS is around 100 in the end.

All the coffees he brewed tasted really great and vibrant, the (roaster’s) descriptors were on point. He mentioned they target 1.3 TDS of the drink, and it was indeed quite intense, even the geisha. So the drinking experience was spectacular.

Final Thoughts

Now, getting back to the two things I mentioned earlier.

The overall experience of the baristas communicating to you in my opinion is aimed at people who are not hardcore snobs like y’all, so that they can leave feeling amazed or having had learned something new. This is probably why they have so many medium and dark roasts: I saw people ordering them deliberately, because that’s the common thing to do if you just like coffee, which is perfectly fine, by the way.

The reason I’m bringing this up is so that you manage your expectations — it’s not some sort of advanced coffee academy exclusively for Coffee ad Astra subs, which you might hype yourself up to after reading too many reviews online (sorry Jonathan for the random plug, I’m a huge fan, by the way 😊). Especially, considering my next and final point.

And my final point is… the queues. Yeah, if you are like me, chances are you will spend around 40 minutes standing in one, before getting into the building. It’s a Japanese thing in general, but I recommend you think twice if the queue if that lengthy.

I knew what I was doing because I really wanted to visit Mameya, and my understanding wife even went to sit in a cafe nearby, while I enjoyed the wait. In return, I brought her a tasty cup of washed Kenya coffee. Unfortunately she got a bit mad it didn’t have any milk so I died inside a little. 😅

I wish they would increase the throughput of the shop somehow, though, or maybe allow bookings like their Kakeru branch does. Obviously it’s not the customers’ fault, as we were all in the same boat.

Overall, these nitpicks aside, I loved the experience very much. The coffees were great, the baristas were friendly and helpful, and the atmosphere was unique.

There’s definitely a market for more such places in London! And just like y’all, I’d also wish to open one when I retire, so it was nice to record a different kind of sample into my collection.

I don’t believe anyone has actually read the whole thing, but thanks for coming! 😊

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