Age.3 GINZA — Restaurant in Tokyo

Leaving this review after trying the food unlike most these people leaving reviews based on getting the free sandwich.

Items we had: Tuna salad sandwich, Whipped cream sandwich, and the Keema Curry Sandwhich.

Will try to be as straightforward as possible but this could be a long pros and cons list.

Starting with the pros:

Good service for what is objectively a bunch of kids working at a sandwich shop. Kind, respectful, and seemed to be having fun with each other despite it being busy seemingly from open to close every day.

Items were pretty good. Id say the worst actually was the one you see everywhere on social (the whipped cream). It probably is worth getting it with fruit or something else to cut the oil from the fried bread. The Keema Curry one was great, I'd go back just for that alone.

Park next door. Not sure if this was happenstance or they chose that location because of the park, but having kids made that spot amazing. Kids played with mom while I stood in line. Was an cloudy day so wasn't hot at all. I can't imagine waiting there on a hot day. That would be torchure. Also gave a nice place to eat, unfortunately lots of people had one person and line and the others sitting at the tables in the park to "save the spot" for when their turn came around to get food. But that's more of a warning than anything Age.3 could control.

Pleasent worker answering questions and handing out menues and directing people where to go.

Wait wasn't too bad (40 min) on a Monday morning around 11:30am. Ginza is very busy almost always, so people need to keep their expectations in check for lines for places like these that are 100% for the "experience of the food". Realize that you are standing in line for a sandwich you could very likely make at home. This sandwhich won't change your life.

Cons:

You will likely wait over 30 min. Its not a Tourist trap. You do not have to go. Its a sandwhich. Some of the best food in the world are in Tokyo that have no wait. You DO NOT HAVE TO EAT HERE.

Having a bigger store would help with the speed. Its probably a "suffering from success" type situation but the adjacent building is nearly empty and was setup as a coffee place. If I were them, id move into that other building and take a couple floors and add some seating for the hotter and colder months.

This line in the summer would absolutely not be worth it. Speculative as I havent tried it in the summer but I could only guess.

A tad oily. I think there could be a better way to drain/dry the bread after frying

Carry bigger sizes of merchandise. 90% of the line are foreigners that are bigger than the average Japanese person. Largest shirt at the time was a Japanese XL.

Note: Some lady, American/Euro tourist was an absolute asshole to the staff and they didn't deserve it but handled very well. Conversation went something like this:

Tourist showed up and surprised to see the line.

Tourist: "About how long would you say this wait is?"

Employee: "It is probably a little over 40 min or so, can I offer you a menu?"

Tourist: "Sure I guess..." Grabed the menu and walked to the end of the line.

5 min goes by and tourists walks to the front of the store where the same worker is

Tourist starts berating the employees about how its a joke they aren't going faster, why would anyone sit here and wait in this line for a sandwhich and says that she is going to go spend her money elsewhere and they dont deserve anything.

Obviously, based on the reviews they are doing just fine. The store is buy open to close line 30+ min long. If you can't be a decent human to a regular worker you don't deserve to be helped by anyone for anything. Cook at home. Dont Travel. And definitely dont come to one of the most densely populated places in the world and expect to be the center of...

So sadly this is a place absolutely over hyped by Instagram etc. It's not bad, but it's also nothing special either. The real reason to rank it so low is it's near impossible to eat. If you do decide to go here I've attached a picture of something you need to buy at a pharmacy before going there. I had the curry one and seasonal grape one. At the end of the day they are impossible to eat/extremely messy and in the case of the curry one doesn't taste any better (or any worse in all fairness) than a regular fried Curry Pan, though Japanese bakers figured out decades ago that the format of a regular Curry Pan is the ultimate way to eat it so it doesn't end up all over your shirt and shorts(ask me how I know lol). In the end you'll end up eating just the top first (very messily) and then end up with some relatively bland bread to eat after. Overall it's pretty to look at but taste is nothing special and difficulty to actually eat is high. Also there are ZERO seats or tables, so you need to walk across the street to a park that has 1 or 2 picnic tables that are always full of people, and a bunch of concrete pillars that you can sit on. A warning is the MOMENT you sit down a million not afraid of people pigeons will then literally jump on you for your sandwich. Just go to a regular Japanese bakery and you'll be MUCH happier in the end. My wife is Japanese and we are in Tokyo often and she said the exact same thing regarding our experience.

Also a warning they have lots of 5 star "bought" reviews because they give you a free sandwich if you do a google review...

This store bribes customers for reviews. They hand out a flyer advertising a free product if shown a review. They don't explicitly mention a five star review being required, though the implication is clear. Scan through the reviews for this store; a disproportionate amount of them are left by accounts that give only a rating without any comment on food quality (or any comment at all). The review has to be presented before ordering, so any review left by customers for the purpose of obtaining the free product is dishonest, except in the case of repeat customers.

I mention this so future customers will have context on why this store has the rating it does. Temper your expectations, the rating has been artificially inflated.

Underhanded business practices aside, this review's rating will be scored purely based on the quality of the food and ordering experience.

I had the egg salad fried sandwich. There's a generous amount of filling, and quite good tasting too. I enjoyed the bread much more than the filling though, but unfortunately there was only a thin slice of bread that's been hollowed out. Bread to filling ratio was much too skewed towards the filling.

Overall it's a decent sandwich, though very underwhelming given the store rating.

Queue took 45 min at 2pm. Lots of waiting in the sun. Price per sandwich is 750 yen. Personally I don't think it's...