ignis is a small pourover coffee store off the Yanaka Ginza shopping street in the Sendagi / Yanaka area. We went here at the recommendation of one of my readers (thanks, keep them coming!) Having visited the area recently to check out some other coffee shops, we’re beginning to realise that Sendagi and Yanaka are a bit of a coffee hot spot.
They have a number of different beans available for their pourover, ranging from 1000 to 4000 yen for a cup. They had 3 from Ethiopia, two from Panama and then one from Bolivia. They also had a limited edition “tsuyu” (rainy season) blend available for 1500 yen.
They also have some interesting coffee combinations for those not as interested in pourover, like their Coconut Cloud Coffee. The general price range is 1000 yen for a drink so it’s on the premium end.
They also had an omakase set for 2000 where you can let the barista choose 2 - 3 beans.
You can sniff all of the beans, and surprisingly I quite liked the smell of the tsuyu blend so I went with that one for 1500 yen, while my husband got the 1000 yen Ethiopia Jimma Gera. Generally we can be a bit stingy with our coffee bean choices - maybe it may have been worth splurging a little bit here.
My husband got to talking to the barista as he made our coffee, and we learned that he’s still a university student who got into doing coffee in the last 2 years, and started working here part-time 6 months ago. One day, he’d love to be able to run his own store!
The pourover setup had these little gold balls that the brew would drip onto - we were curious what that was, since we had seen the same setup before at Glitch. He had taken the balls out of the fridge, so they were quite chilled. He explained to us that as the coffee is really hot, some of its deliciousness will escape as steam, so the balls help cool it down and prevent that from happening. In the winter months, since it’s quite cold already he doesn’t tend to use them.
At first I quite liked the Ethiopian bean, but the more I sipped the tsuyu blend, I started to enjoy the brighter acidity of that one as well.
The coffee is served in matcha cups - an aesthetic choice they made, plus it lets you sip the coffee with both hands. They’re apparently handmade by a friend of the owner.
The barista also explained that what was interesting about the blend bean itself was that apparently 99% of Kenyan beans are washed, but this used a Kenyan bean that was naturally processed instead.
While we were chatting we decided to also ask the barista for some coffee recommendations - he told us Kuramae was a pretty good area for coffee, which in a nice coincidence we had visited for the first time a couple of weeks ago. More specifically, a store known as Nishiya Coffee Counter. He let us know that when judges come from overseas for barista competitions, they will go to Nishiya, so the technique of the barista there is very good. In particular he was a fan of their banana coffee milkshake.
His other recommendation was a store called Sputnik - he quite likes the space-themed name.
I don’t always ask the barista for recommendations but I’m realising it’s a pretty good way to find good coffee shops (better than trawling Reddit threads, anyway) so I’ll have to make a habit of doing it more in the future.
We didn’t buy any beans this time, but to give you a sense of the range on offer, they had some pre-packaged beans ranging from 2500 yen to 5000 yen for 100g (and one Geisha for 6000 yen for 50g).
They were selling all of the beans available to drink, plus a few more as well.
As an additional bit of trivia we learned from the Barista, the owner of Ignis Coffee was originally a barista at Glitch, and then left to open his own store here. There seem to be a couple of ex-Glitch baristas who go on to open their own stores (another apparently one called Acid?) so I suppose Glitch really is quite influential on the pourover coffee scene.
Checking out the How House art gallery
I’ll admit in my first time checking out the Yanesen area I wasn’t too impressed, but it’s since redeemed itself. After enjoying our coffee, we wandered around outside and found our way into an art exhibit nearby.
It seems they swap out their exhibits regularly, so today they were displaying these sculptures by an artist named Hotaru Takahashi which were like a mashup between an animal and a food object.
On the second floor was another set of artworks for sale, including quite a few birds.
The How House exhibits are split across a couple of buildings a short walk from each other.
This one was selling prints of hedgehogs which were quite cute.
Plus this Nike-scorpion mashup.
We also grabbed some pastries from the Yanaka Ginza street before we headed home - Bakery Hitotema.
Hi, I'm Emma!
I'm a long-time lover of coffee - back in Sydney my go-to drink was always a soy cappucino. After I moved to Tokyo 4 years ago, I discovered the wonders of pour-over coffee and now I'm always on the lookout for new coffee beans to try. So far I've checked out 27 coffee shops and roasters here in Japan.
If you found this post useful, you can also show your support by buying me a coffee ☕
Leave a comment