Recently, we lined up for 45 minutes to try some pastries from a bakery in the Yanesen area, very simply named Think. Only 3 people are allowed in the store at a time, so as you get closer and closer, you are left to stare hungrily at the pastries behind the shop’s screen doors.
Once inside, we made a beeline for their croissants.
And since we had lined up for so long, we decided to make it worth our while and pick up a couple of baguettes and other pastries to eat later at home.
The verdict - really good, genuinely super delicious croissants and (almost) worth the wait! We visited sometime around 11am on a weekend, so I’d hope you have better luck if you swing by during the week - but one Google review suggests you’ll still line up 30+ minutes even if you arrive around 10am on a weekday.
Quite possibly the reason for the long lines is that I discovered that it is currently ranked 2nd on the best bakeries in Tokyo on Tabelog, which is the most popular food-reviewing app in Japan. (The star rating looks like a low 3.87, but Japanese food reviewers are much harsher critics and a 3 is considered “normal”). A Google review from a month ago mentioned that it was ranked 4th, so it seems like it has jumped up the rankings as well.
The shop is housed in a little complex known as Ueno Sakuragi Atari (上野桜木あたり), a cluster of 3 houses built in 1938. Reading up on the history of the buildings, it seems like the owners wanted to make sure that the houses were preserved as they were in order to help keep the character of the Yanesen area, and so they were converted into businesses. They did a pretty good job of renovating the now 85+ year houses, if you take a look at the before and after photos from the bottom of this page.
It seems like it’s had a succession of bakeries use the same space - back in 2015, one called Kayaba (which, by the way, one of the chefs from there ended opening up another bakery nearby called Nezu no Pan). At some point Kayaba was replaced by a Norwegian bakery called Vaner, which closed in 2022. And now we’re onto at least the third iteration of a bakery in the same spot.
… which is a bit of tangent, but I’d be curious to see how long Think sticks around.
At the very least, it was super popular when we went, and surely should have no trouble making sales.
Leave a comment