Starbucks Reserve Roastery Tokyo
📍 Tokyo, Nakameguro
A four-floor, Kengo Kuma–designed coffee cathedral in Nakameguro with its own roasting floor, a cocktail bar, a tea room, and a Milanese bakery — one of the largest Starbucks Reserve Roasteries on Earth.
Rising four floors over the Meguro River in Nakameguro is Starbucks Reserve Roastery Tokyo, one of only a handful of Reserve Roasteries in the world and, by most measures, the largest. It opened on 28 February 2019, designed by architect Kengo Kuma, whose signature timber lattice work wraps the building in a wave of pale wood meant to echo the cherry trees lining the river outside.
Why It’s Interesting
This isn’t a normal Starbucks — it’s closer to a four-story theme park built around coffee. The ground floor houses Princi, a Milanese bakery; the second is a Teavana tea room; the third is the Arriviamo bar, serving coffee-based cocktails; and the top floor is a working roasting floor, where beans are actually roasted on-site behind glass, with the aroma piped through the whole building via a network of copper pipes overhead. It’s a genuinely striking piece of architecture as much as it is a café.
Best Time to Visit
It’s open daily, but weekends draw long lines just to get in the door. A weekday morning is the easier visit. Spring (late March–early April) adds the bonus of cherry blossoms along the Meguro River right outside.
Getting There
About a 7–8 minute walk from Nakameguro Station (Tokyu Toyoko Line / Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line), along the river — pleasant on foot, with minimal parking nearby for anyone driving.
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
A traveler called ghost popsicle wrote to me about a coffee shop in Nakameguro, which sounded modest until I found the building: four whole floors, a roastery on top, a bar, a tea room, and a bakery, all under one Kengo Kuma roof of pale wood that curls up like it's mid-stretch.
I climbed it floor by floor — bread smells on one, tea steam on the next, then the actual roasting machinery clanking away up top like a small, delicious factory. Got swept along in a line that took nearly an hour on a Saturday and did not regret a second of it.
The humans around me kept saying it was worth the wait, and I agree, with one squirrel tip: come on a weekday morning instead, and walk the river out front — the same cherry trees that make spring unbearable make an ordinary Tuesday pretty great too.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
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