Curated cafes

Remaindered space is a particular Tokyo specialty. In boom-town Kichijoji, fifteen minutes west of Shinjuku, the city center is indistinguishable from any othey busy subcenter in the capital - Isetan, Marui, Tokyu, Kinokuniya, together with their phalanxes of service staff decked out in costumes that make everyone look like PanAm flight attendants from the seventies. What you don't expect in slick Kichijoji-central are the unkempt hideouts that nestle alongside the slick mall developments. Right in front of the north exit is Hamonika Yokochou (ハモニカ横町), a scrambled assortment of fishmongers, shops of mouldering pickles, 4-seater curry houses run by unrepentant "Indo-kei" types, donburi counters, auntie emporiums and "viking" smorgasbord standing cafe-bars. One of them serves "one-coin lunch." I clambered up the steep and clackety staircase without toppling over, sat myself in front of a five-seater bar on top of which a large casserole of niku-jaga and gyu-suji (meat and potatoes; beef tendons) simmered disconsolately. The stools were rickety and capped with red vinyl. For Y500, I got an hors d'oeuvre bento-box of a half crescent of odened daikon, cabbage salad, pickles and groundnuts, and then miso soup and a tuna and leek garlic saute. The lone window was cruddy, plastered over with band flyers, far-flung sake and shochu labels, one-off design exhibition postcards.

This is the scruffy chic that has made Tokyo's name for offhanded and cave-like dining options. But of course, Tokyo is also replete with the other extreme, hard to find so thick on the ground even somewhere like New York or London or Paris. I am talking, of course, about the Curated Cafe. The Curated Cafe is by no means unique in the Tokyo world of mass consumer happiness; there are legions of curated boutiques with historically accurate fetishes displayed like cabinets of curiosities; curated hair salons with vintage turntables that play infuriatingly well-chosen lounge exotica rarities; curated record shops with passionate agendas to push; etc etc. Beams, which celebrated its 30th anniversary recently, began scouring European craft fairs and flea markets, American heartland thrift stores before retro became retro. It probably invented the whole idea of the postmodern international emporium. It's now become something of an integrated empire of enlightened curatorship in art, fashion, music, and craft. It has the look and feel of a proselytizing bazaar, a kind of freemasonry of taste that nonetheless graciously welcomes new initiates who don't have the time to cultivate a personality, and then spend money agonizing over how to best externalize it. It tells you, what awfully mundane tastes you have. Look at your high street chain store threads and mass produced accessories. Come and peruse our precisely selected collections of artisanal wares, drop some cash and walk out a convert to a higher-order post-materialism (emphatically not the same as anti-materialism).

In Kichijoji, the best Curated Cafe I could find was Medewo and Dine, an "interior shop and cafe" in the Tokyu "Ura" backstreet area, but there are doubtless more stringently assembled ones in Daikanyama or Nakameguro. Medewo sells you food, espresso drinks (surprisingly good, actually) but also Freitag bags, graphic prints and Italian coffee equipment and tableware. The floor is unfinished cement, the tables are Formica and the chairs reconstructed from some mix of vinyl, PVC and Bauhaus stainless steel tubes. On the self-service reading shelf there's Classic Cafes, Adrian Maddox's loving monograph to the London formica Italian coffee bar (leatherette, Deco lettering, vitrolite and laminates), Medewo's acknowlegment, planted Nabokov-like on the premises for the astute "reader," of its historical references. This is one of the recombinant ones, taking various pokey inspirations from the sixties and stage-managed for an audience likely too young to fall for a coherent and thematically consistent reconstruction - of which there are plenty: zinc-barred and wicker-chaired French bistros and cafes in Azabu Juban or Daikanyama for example.

There is also, a ten minute walk from the station, A. K. Labo Patisserie, a two storey ivy-wound white clapboard house made out on the inside with beautifully worn dark wood floorboards and half-hearted Eames moulded plywood chairs. It's light and airy and the rotating art exhibitions have the same feeling - unretouched craft-fair sock monkeys, lovingly framed color pencil etchings, kitchen knitwork done by hobbyist housewives. The tarts have filigree filo and perfect crumbiness, the apple one with graceful juliennes, the chocolate Tigre gummy and sponge cakey at the same time. The bookshelf is casually stocked with Paris flea market and antique store guidebooks, LOHAS magazines with pastel photos of cycling in the park, baking quiche and shopping for tsukemono at the obaasan's pickle stall. French radio plays ethnic selections from its outer departements, like Henri Salvador or Guadeloupean beach bar sugarcane shimmy- let's sip curacao easy-listening. It also reports the latest traffic conditions on the Peripherique and counsels you to head on down to the Centre Pompidou for the last day of the Herge bande dessinee retrospective. It's just more pleasantly curated leisure time for the Japanese, but somewhat unnerving for me. If only because I get the niggling feeling that the Japanese do French better than the French do themselves.