Blue Bottle Coffee - Shinagawa Cafe — Restaurant in Tokyo

This cafe is located on the level right above the Shinkansen ticket office in Shinagawa station. We prefer this brand of cafes rather than Starbucks as they typically feature better coffee machines and more engaged staff, as well as other foods of course. Blue Bottle Coffee is inside a department store and features any type of coffee you would like, as well as various bakery products. We couldn‘t find the brand of the coffee machine, but the flavor was great. You order the coffee in the front of the “island“ in the middle of the cafe. When it is ready, your coffee and order number will be called out. We speak Japanese, but even if you don‘t, most of the staff members speak a little bit of English. There is seating by the window, overlooking the steady stream of people flowing through Shinagawa station, or seats at tables or a long bar-like table inside the cafe. The coffee is carefully crafted and we found it delicious. It is not very bitter, but strong and flavorful with just the right amount of milk in the cappucinos we ordered. Because we like our cappucinos strong we ordered an extra shot of espresso. Since the cups are quite small the extra shot of espresso comes on the side. In fact, this is usually the best way of ordering an extra shot as it isn‘t very common to do so in Japan and often the term “extra shot“ leads to confusion. It is better to simply order a cappucino and an espresso and then dump the espresso in your cappucino or flat white. Flat whites tend to have much more milk than in Europe. The Blue Bottle Cafe does not feature a flat white coffee.

Location: 5/5 Ambience: 3/5 (it‘s fine but nothing special, but much nicer than Starbucks) Coffee: 5/5 Staff: 5/5 Price quality: 5/5 (low price,...

This is one of my favorite casual coffee spot in Tokyo. However, something occurred today (around 15:40 of 1/19/2025) that frustrated me a lot and considered to never visit this shop again.

The thing is part of the company's order-taking mechnism is to ask for the customer's name in order to identify the customer when the coffee is ready. In this occasion, a male server, who has shoulder length hair, did not ask my name while ordering. Therefore, when my coffee was ready, it was mistakenly taken by another customer.

I was not sure whether this was due to the fact that my order was taken in English until I saw another English speaking customer encountered the same problem. Furthermore, despite not being able to speak well, I can personally understand the Japanese language well.

Basically, all Japanese customers were being asked what their name were, while all non-Japanese customers were not, which could cause confusion on the other end.

Please improve your employee training program. I would still go to other blue coffee shops around Japan and US, but would not come to this...

First, the good points. I think the place looks nice. Minimalistic and good design sense. The service is good also. The cashier made a mistake with my order so I had to pay the difference in cash, but they were kind to explain it well. (In Japanese tho) They gave me a complimentary Columbian cup as well. Another thing is the waffle tastes good.

For the bad points. I’ve heard that Blue Bottle Coffee is like a commercial third wave cafe so I expected an average pourover. I was surprised with the single origin cup (Brazil) I ordered. To be honest, it tasted like a pourover made by a beginner. It lacked flavor and Im guessing the ratio was off because it was too watery. I’ve tried a lot of pourovers around Tokyo, both from third-wave and kissaten types, but this is probably the worst cup I’ve had from a cafe. I’m sorry this review is harsh, but I would like to give an honest review. It might be a one-off, but this was my experience. I’m not sure if I would...