Bagel & Bagel

Name: Bagel & Bagel
Type: Cafe Chain

Info: Web Site

I had seen several of these Bagel & Bagel cafes around Tokyo and in a few areas just outside the city centre (I tried the one in Tama Plaza) but I had never been a bagel fan (not as big in Australia as it is in the States I guess) so therefore didn't really see a point in giving them a go until I was starving and unable to find a real smoke free establishment to unwind in.

I was pleasantly surprised!

While I'm pretty sure Bagel & Bagel is Japanese owned, the feel and look of their cafes have a very strong western feel to them. They even claim to make their bagels "American style".

The insides were very well designed with kudos to the manager for having real plants in the pots (way too many plastic plants in Japan for my liking) and English names for all the items on the menu. Though be careful as using the English names on the menu might not get you what you want. For example I ordered the Gourmet Drink Set and the woman had no idea what I was going on about. However when I read the Katakana title, "Dorinku Seto" she knew exactly where I was coming from and hilariously asked some of the other girls working why the English subtitles say different things than the Japanese.

All the menus do have pictures of each item though (even of the different kinds of bagels you can choose from, over 20!) so if your Japanese ability fails you, just point and say "Kore wo kudasai".

I grabbed a latte as my drink and the Vegetarian Bagel for my bagel of choice as well as a chocolate cookie (very similar to those great Subway cookies! Yum.) and found it a bit of a mixed bag. The bagel was great. Fresh ingredients and made in front of me behind a glass screen so I could see what was being put into it. Unlike Subway though, they don't ask you what you'd like at every stage so make sure you tell the waitress what you want before heading to the pick-up point.

The latte on the other hand was just... flat. It's like they had bought 100 yen milk and fried it in a saucepan. It just tasted wrong and, well... don't go there for the coffee!

Great bagels though and they do have other drink alternatives. Well worth a look.

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