The well-ventilated and pleasantly uncrowded, cave-like basement of Green Terrace Omotesando, the flashy fashion street’s newest boutique cluster, is home to Tokyo’s first Philocoffea café, a dainty shrine to serious speciality coffee.
Playing the role of head priest here is pour-over phenom Tetsu Kasuya, the 2016 World Brewers Cup Champion, a coffee-community celeb famed for his uncompromising approach to both hand-drip science and bean curation.
The inventor of the revolutionary 4:6 method – an intuitive formula for dividing the hot water used to brew a cup of coffee, which allows for easy flavour adjustments – Kasuya has introduced the coffee world to a smattering of buzz-generating recipes in recent years. At the Omotesando café he showcases his latest hybrid approach: a combination of pour-over and immersion. The result? An impeccably balanced cup with the silkiest taste around.