Brunch in Tokyo: Eco Farm Cafe 632

Tadaima (I’m home)!

I have been away for five weeks to Australia and Singapore – whoo. What a loooong holiday. I can’t quite hang up my travelling shoes just yet — I’ll be flying to Niseko, Hokkaido, in mid-Feb to finalize the details for my wedding in October this year, and at end of Feb, I’ll be heading to Melbourne for a friend’s wedding. But for now, it feels great to be back in my cozy Tokyo apartment where I can eat like a rabbit and work like a demon.

I think I’m fairly organized when I travel, but this time, I left behind a couple of things at my folks’ place in Sing Sing — a nut milk bag (I have extras in Tokes) and my digital camera cable. Aarrrrgh. I took a ton of photos just for blogging so now I am stuck. I reeeeally wanted to blog about my time in Oz because today is Australia Day (Happy Australia Day to all my friends Down Under!!! *Hugs and kisses*) and I have no backlog photos on hand for my blog over at Beauty Box…..so….I shall entertain you today with something from Tokyo….

If you are a long-time follower of this blog, you would know that my food posts tended to focus on dinner and cooking, but in the last year, I found myself enjoying brunch/lunch out in Tokyo much more than my evening meals if I did dine out. I’m not sure what the exact reasons are except that lunch deals in Tokyo are simply awesome and make expensive restaurants affordable during the day (prices are jacked up three times more for dinner) and perhaps my friends just like meeting up for a late morning or midday meal.

Weekend brunches are a Western concept that is all about waking up late, savouring a heavy meal (it is brekkie-and-lunch combined!), chatting for hours without other appointments in sight, and then heading home for a snooze or goro-goro (means “rolling on the floor” in Japanese; also has the nuance of just lazing around and doing nothing at home). I suppose “brunch” also means egg dishes like a big fry-up or eggs benedict or pancakes which are admittedly hard to find outside gaijin-town, Roppongi. So, I just make do and there are so many places with kick-ass lunch deals on the weekend.

In late autumn last year, my friends and I met up at Eco Farm (Japanese site here), a unique homey cafe nestled in the middle of Harajuku. It’s located in one of the small streets behind Condomania (found at the junction between Harajuku and Omotesando) and it’ll be on your right if you come from this landmark.

You can get a lunch set from 1,000JPY onwards which includes a salad and a drink, along with your main. I chose a pasta dish which they vegetarianized without a glitch. They replaced the octopus with spinach and I got a delicious plate of garlicky, salty veggie spaghetti…

The salad was tasty with bits of funky seaweed…..Weird, but yum…

The bread came with this set as well, and since everyone went with a set, the bread was put in a communal basket.

I just love it when restaurants don’t blink an eye at special requests. Sadly, this is not the case in many Japanese joints where changing the dish is not allowed or you can take out an ingredient but you can’t replace it with something else.

I got my friend to snap a photo of the sandwich set he got — everyone else couldn’t resist the pasta. Their menu was a standard soup, salad, pasta, sandwich one that many cafes have here so the trick is to stand out from the crowd. I would say their portions were large so that was a total winner with me. I hate feeling like I need more to eat after a meal out in town…

For a cafe, this was pretty large and could hold about 50 people from a glance. Since it was in the heart of Harajuku, it was no surprise there were quite a few gaijins (among which were probably tourists?) while we were there.

I would definitely recommend Eco Farm as a place for brunch or a fuel stop if you are shopping in the area. It’s in a central location but tucked away from the hustle and bustle.

I have a few more brunch places to review coming up so stay tuned for more food-related posts.

What is your fave brunch spot in Tokyo?

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