Tucked away on a back street in Kichijoji is World Breakfast Allday, one of three local branches that allows diners to “get acquainted with foreign culture over breakfast.” While British, American, and Taiwanese breakfast plates are available on the regular menu year-round, the best part of World Breakfast Allday is its other rotating menu, which spotlights a different kind of international cuisine every two months. From now until Sunday, October 1, it’s serving a Mexican breakfast of “huevos divorciados.”
Even if you miss that offering, there are other local restaurants like Breakfast Club Tokyo in Meguro or Soul Food House in Azabu-Juban that still serve huevos rancheros or breakfast burritos. Breakfast Club is also right across the street from the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, one of only six in the world.
World Breakfast Allday in Kichijoji
The other two branches of World Breakfast Allday are in Shibuya and Ginza. The Shibuya one (near Gaiemmae Station on the Ginza Line) is slightly cramped and will have you sitting elbow-to-elbow with strangers at a long table in a tight space.
Today I ate at the one in Kichijoji, which offers more breathing room and is about a five-minute walk from that station on the Inokashira Line or Chuo-Sobu Line. The restaurant is still small and set back from the street, but they’ve got a big sign out by the sidewalk, so you can’t miss it. Inside, it has an open kitchen, so you can look across the island counter and its shelves of canned goods and see the staff hard at work preparing your meal.
There’s also an information pamphlet folded up like a napkin on the table, which explains the background of the bimonthly food culture and each ingredient in English and Japanese. In this case, I found myself reading about the roots of Mexican cuisine in Mesoamerican (Mayan and Aztec) civilizations, coupled with Spanish and Iberian influences. Huevos divorciados, or “divorced eggs,” is a variation on huevos rancheros, served here with one black and one white tortilla topped with red and green salsa, respectively. Refried beans go down the middle, and it comes with a side of guacamole and ground chorizo.
Soul Food House and Breakfast Club Tokyo
World Breakfast Allday has been on my radar since back in late 2020 when they were serving a Southern American breakfast with biscuits and sausage gravy. We had that dish as part of our brunch at Soul Food House near Azabu-Juban Station a few weeks back. For the main dish, we ordered their “Breakfast Burrito Lite,” but while the taste was good, I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t have a bigger sausage breakfast burrito option, since the “Lite” one was really just two mini burritos wrapped up in taco-size tortillas.
Blu Jam Cafe (also in Azabu-Juban) served a heartier and all-around more satisfying breakfast burrito, but it closed last summer—just weeks after we discovered it, alas. Ever since then, I’ve been on the hunt for a good Mexican breakfast in Tokyo. (While no one but people who live here will probably be interested in global chain restaurants, anyway, I should mention that Taco Bell in Tokyo no longer serves breakfast, either.)
The search recently led me to Breakfast Club Tokyo in Meguro, where I had true huevos rancheros in a diner-like setting. Breakfast Club is only a few bus stops from Shibuya Station; you could probably even walk it if you’re up for a little hike.
The Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Meguro
As mentioned, the Starbucks Reserve Roastery is just across the street from Breakfast Club Tokyo, and it’s one of only six such Roasteries in the world. The other five are in Seattle, Shanghai, Milan, New York, and Chicago. The Tokyo Roastery is four floors, with a big ground-floor roaster you can watch and a wall of teacups leading up to the second floor. Overhead, there are “symphony pipes” carrying coffee beans from a four-story copper cask to various silos.
I ordered Colombian coffee, the Gesha varietal from a farm called Cerro Azul. It was ¥1,780 for a Short, and I’m afraid I don’t have the kind of cultured palate to describe all the nuances of flavor, as it mostly just tasted like black coffee to me.
Chalk it up to the brown sugar cubes, but I liked the Mexican coffee I had at World Breakfast Allday better. As promised by the information card, though, I did detect (or imagine I could detect) faint “notes of honeysuckle and acai berry” when I got to the bottom and was taking my very last sip of Gesha coffee.
I suppose at a place like the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, you’re paying more for the experience. The Tokyo Roastery’s exterior was designed by architect Kengo Kuma, who also designed Japan National Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics were held. It has outdoor decks on its third and fourth floors, and it’s right alongside the Meguro River, a popular cherry blossom viewing spot in the spring.