Canal Cafe in Kagurazaka
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Did you know Tokyo has a French neighborhood? Neither did we!
Kagurazaka is home to a maze of cute little streets filled with French and Italian restaurants, bakeries, cheese shops, and even some fancy stores where you can get imported food or European knick-knacks. It’s a lovely neighborhood that was fun to explore, and hopefully we’ll do a full post on it sometime. There were a lot of European tourists around, so apparently the word has gotten out about this place.
We enjoyed a nice stroll and made our way from Kagurazaka Station to Iidabashi Station, where there’s an Italian restaurant on the water that provides a lovely oasis in the middle of the city.
Canal Cafe restaurant at Iidabashi
Canal Cafe is right across the street from Iidabashi Station, and has a pastry shop as well as a full restaurant. Tucked behind a plant-covered wall, the restaurant was hard to miss since there was a long line out front. There are two sides to the Canal Cafe: one is the cafe side, where you order coffee and small treats from the counter and find a seat along the water. This is the side that had the long line. The other side is the restaurant side, where we were able to walk right in for lunch.
They gave us the option of sitting inside or outside, so of course we sat outside, where we had a lovely view of the canal, which was filled with carp that a knee-high child fed little bits of bread and squealed with delight. There are also boats there, and we saw one family brave the water in a rowboat. The canal is really lovely and I can’t believe I had never heard of this place before. They even allow dogs inside at this restaurant (not common in Japan), and we saw a cute little toy poodle who looked at us and we were pleased.
Although we’d come to Kagurazaka for a French experience since we love French food in all its glory, the Canal Cafe has Italian cuisine, which was fine by us since Italian food is delicious. Like many Japanese restaurants, it had a set lunch menu, so we got that.
Appetizers and salads from the Canal Cafe lunch menu
The first course was a series of four small appetizers, beautifully laid out on a tray. The menu just said “antipasti,” so I wasn’t expecting much, but these were fantastic. The first was an arancini that was okay but could have used more sauce. The second was salmon with lemon and… stuff on it. Honestly, I didn’t need the stuff; the salmon was fine on its own, super tasty. The next was some pork and beets, prepared in a standard Japanese way and quite good. The last one was the real winner: cured meat, cheese, and tomato on a skewer, with just a little bit of sauce for good measure. Getting all three in one bite is the way to go - perfectly complemented each other.
There were two salad dressing options, soy and Caesar, and we tried both. They were pretty good, though I preferred the Japanese dressing. The salad had a lot of red pepper in it, which I enjoyed. The food at this place could be pretty bland and they’d still do business given the tranquil atmosphere, but you get a lot for your money and it’s interesting and tasty. The big fear at Japanese Italian restaurants is that it’ll either be middle-of-the-road standard Italian food or some abomination with corn and hot sauce on the pasta (a real thing some places do), but this was a fresh, light version of Italian classics done with respect. And we were only half done.
Entrees at the Canal Cafe
For my entree, I had chicken and what we in the business call “poofy pudding” (please respect my culture). I didn’t eat the asparagus because I am bizarrely allergic to it. The chicken was decent, but the potatoes and mushroom (a food I normally don’t like) were out of this world. This is what I mean when I say the food is better than it has to be - they could have just shoved some airplane-food veggies on the plate and called it good, but some real care went into making this.
Eriko got a pizza with stinky cheese, lemon, nuts, and honey. It was really good (I dipped some of the crust in the honey and it was fantastic), but she’d eaten my pudding while waiting for her pizza so she was already mostly full and couldn’t finish. It was a lot of food for the money, especially with drinks included. Not as good as our beloved Eataly, but at a little more than half the price, it was pretty good.
Overall, I would recommend the Canal Cafe as a lovely respite from a day walking the sweltering summer streets of Tokyo. It’s a nice place to sit for a while, the prices are reasonable, and the food is pretty darn good. And you get to see doggies!
Where is the Canal Cafe?
Address: 1 Chome-9 Kagurazaka, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 162-0825
Phone: +81 0332608068
The Canal Cafe is located in Kagurazaka, but is closest to Iidabashi Station. Because it’s so close to the subway, it’s pretty easy to get there. In our experience, there was no need for a reservation for the restaurant, but if you’re planning to do the cafe side, you should expect to wait in line.
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