There are two floors of food hall foodstuffs in the basement of Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo: fresh fish, bread, cakes, vegetables, strawberries (extremely expensive strawberries) and once you’ve looked round at all the foodstuff wonders your next stop is obviously to go and have a cup of tea.
If you want hot tea (not tea from the food hall that comes in a packet) you need to go to the ninth floor. There’s a number of places up there to eat and drink, along with a garden terrace and a smoking room. We opted for trying the Minori Cafe. There were windows along one side of the top floor where people sat and drank tea and ate food from the cafe but unfortunately they were all full so we sat at a table in the middle instead.
R had Beni-Fuki (our English menu described it as ‘Japan made tea’) and I had green bean and spinach rice milk. Both were available hot or iced, but we both went for the hot version as it was a grey rainy day and we wanted warming up.
My drink wasn’t strictly tea (okay, so it wasn’t tea at all) but it was really very tasty. A light sweet taste of green and the smoothness of the rice milk underneath. It wasn’t too sickly or too frothy. R said his tea was also good.
- Teapot? No and sadly only take away cups.
- Leaf tea? No.
- Milk jug? No, but that’s because you don’t have milk with Japanese tea.
- Price? 390 yen for the tea, 590 yen for the green bean and spinach rice milk.
- Cake? I think it had small things, but I was so distracted by the rice milk I didn’t make a note of exactly what. Apologies.
- Go again? Yes. This was a very good rice milk drink and I haven’t found it anywhere else.
Minori Cafe, 9F, Mitsukoshi Department Store, 4-6-16 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-0061. Visited on: Monday 4th March 2019.
Tea for you and me 