I was strolling around Omotesando with a friend visiting from Korea and we happened to drop in. It’s in a building called GYRE, with the boutique on the 1st floor and the café on the 2nd, so it wasn’t hard to find. Prices weren’t crazy by Omotesando standards (though coffee is still 800 yen…), and the atmosphere wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as impressive as I’d expected. In the photos I’d seen in a guidebook it looked like a work of art ^_^ Professional photographers really are something else.
Unusually, this is where you’ll find what’s said to be the only Bvlgari chocolate shop in the world. I took a quick look around and the prices were no joke. A regular one is 600 yen and the most expensive about 1,500 yen (and that’s per piece, not per set), which seemed at least twice what other brands charge. I really doubt they taste worth that much, but I guess they’re meant as gifts for birthdays or other special occasions.
No time to shoot the entrance.. so here’s the table.
Hmm.. somehow the flowerpots looked like something picked up at a 100-yen shop. I wish it had a bit more of a classy feel..
Water glass
The table runner is 100-yen-shop style too. At this level you couldn’t tell it from a knockoff.
Silver cutlery
You don’t get these if you just order coffee; they only come with the three-piece chocolate cake set. For some reason it really doesn’t look the part. Sort of lacking polish.. Eating chocolate with the kind of cutlery you’d get for a steak.. There should be some sense of unity, but it’s all over the place.
Just in case, I flipped it over
and sure enough, the Bvlgari logo is stamped on it. Meh..
Milk tea
Refills are free ^_^ On a weekday when it’s quiet, it seemed like a nice place to order a drink near the terrace and linger for a long time. Even more so since the chairs aren’t bad..
The hot water comes like this.
Enough for at least three or four cups..
The cranberry juice I ordered.
Nicely balanced between sour and sweet. Tasty.
Table
You can see the street in Omotesando. The street level is absolutely packed with people, but go up just one floor and it’s calm. There’s also a café on the 4th floor of this building, and that one looked good too.
Table
But the design was much plainer than I expected. I’m sure it cost a lot, but is this really the best Italian flair can do.. It made me wonder whether this was really a luxury brand’s café.. On the plus side, there’s a decent amount of space between the chairs, which was nice.
The three-piece chocolate set finally arrives
From the left: fondant au chocolat, white chocolate with lemon mousse and almond, and chocolate ice cream. It’s 1,600 yen, and when I checked the bill later it looked like a 10% service charge had been added -_-;; It was the weekend and packed, so the service was a mess, yet they still charge for service. And I waited nearly 30 minutes for this chocolate set, mind you.
Fondant au chocolat
Really delicious. It has molten chocolate inside, but it wasn’t as gooey as I expected, just an easy-to-eat style. The sweetness was nicely restrained too.
White chocolate…
This was simply delicious too. Chocolate, lemon and almond, all familiar ingredients, come together into this amazing flavor. I like sweets, but I’m not that big on chocolate, and still I really enjoyed this one.
Chocolate ice cream
Delicious, as expected. Things need to be at least this good to be worth eating, but places like this are hard to find.. It’s a dilemma. I did wait 30 minutes, but the food was so good that I forgave everything.
Complimentary chocolates
Just right for one bite. Tastier than they look. They came with the coffee too.
And finally, the Bvlgari logo..
went to me, since I was footing the bill today ^_^ These are usually not very tasty, but this chocolate was really good.
The word is that this place is more worthwhile at night than in the daytime, because the daytime menu is the same price at night. People also say the meals aren’t bad for the price. For a light dinner with a reservation, a café like this seems fine. It has name value and it’s easy to get to. Still, it bugs me that the interior and service fall short of what I expected. If you love chocolate, though, it’s probably worth a visit at least once..