Café ApéroNishi-Azabu (flagship)

After ISSEI YUASA opened its doors, our CEO Takeuchi found himself in Nishi-Azabu far more often.

Having built his career in the IT world, Takeuchi is always looking for a café where he can open his laptop and get some work done. But in Nishi-Azabu, try as he might, he could never find one.

That was when he came across this spot.

A café in a neighborhood without cafés. Surely it would not work. That, after all, must be why there were no cafés here. With that thought in mind, we considered what this space could become, keeping other possibilities open too.

The turning point was a meeting with the building's owner.

There, we heard her memories of her late sister. Someday, it would be nice to run a café here together, the two of them used to say.

“We will make that dream real,” Takeuchi promised. As if guided by fate, a café was to be born in this place.

Nishi-Azabu has two faces. By night, it is Minato-ku's secluded inner parlor. By day, surprisingly, it bustles with people at work. Many visitors come from abroad as well.

We suddenly thought of the cafés of Paris. You can pop open Champagne in the morning, or linger over a single cup of coffee. You can have a meal. A Parisian café is the neighborhood's living room, whatever the hour and whatever the reason.

The space is small, and serving full meals might be difficult. But everything else, we could surely do.

In Japan, most people picture a coffee shop when they hear the word café. But a Parisian café is a casual dining room that serves just about anything, and a bar besides. We layered onto that image the word apéro, meaning an aperitif, and sealed it all into a single name: Café Apéro.

At 8 in the morning, the day begins with organic coffee. At lunch, panini supervised by Issei Yuasa of ISSEI YUASA. Come evening, Champagne and wine by the glass. Until 11 at night, the hours flow on, part café, part bar.

It is a small place. It will never make the kind of money a chain does. That is exactly why it is worth GRAPES doing it.

In fact, this is also the place our CEO's friends visit most often.

Every visit reminds us that this is the kind of place we wanted to create. A small, precious place.

※There used to be a grand piano in the café, but there is no longer a piano.