Today I am going to introduce my absolute favourite vegan café so far in Tokyo. Vegan Cafe PQ's is a wonderful small vegan café near Iriya Station in Asakusa, famous for their colorful and delicious curries which change monthly. It also is super cozy and the staff is very friendly. They also have gluten-free options and the café is LGBTQ+ friendly.
About Vegan Cafe PQ's
Besides the saisonal curry, they offer both sweet and savory pancakes, hamburger plates, sweets and baked goods. The special thing about the curry though is: It’s doesn’t only look stunning with all the colors and small details painted on it and taste amazing, depending on the season, different fruits and vegetables are used, sometimes seeing like they don’t belong into curry, but it’s actually so good! It inspires me to try different ingredients in my own cooking as well.Also you might like to know that the rice in the curry can be refilled once for free!
I personally really enjoy the vibe of the café. The wooden furniture and plants are really inviting, and the long glass front which can be opened up in summer allows the space to be flooded with bright, natural sunlight.
You can order in Japanese or English via scanning the QR-code on your table. If you have any questions about the food, the staff is very kind and can speak English very well. Depending on how busy the café is, you might need to wait a little while for your food to arrive, but it’s so worth it, trust me! Maybe bring a book to read while waiting.
Oh, and by the way, if you plan on going on the weekends, you might want to reserve a seat and curry. You can do so by clicking the link in their official instagram account. It would be too sad to go all the way there just to find it too full or the curry to be sold out, right? If you reserved the curry as well, they start preparing it immediately after you arrived, so you won’t have to wait long.
The café also hosts events, which you can find on their instagram as well. And if you add PQ's as a LINE friend, you can actually rent the café space outside of their business hours for 2000¥ per hour.
If you have a dog, you might want to bring it with you as PQ's is a dog-friendly café, even offering a dog latte specifically for dogs. How cool is that? Especially in Tokyo, places welcoming dogs are pretty rare.
About the Food
The all-vegan menu includes plates like a burger patty pancake plate, sausage pancake plate, burger patty rice plate, sweet pancakes made from brown rice, cookies and cookie sandwiches, matcha affogato, ice cream on pudding and more!
They also have different lattes like coffee latte, matcha latte, turmeric latte, caramel latte or sesame latte. And if you like, you can have cute dog latte art on any of their hot drinks which I found so lovely! The standard milk there is bonsoy milk, but you can change to oat milk instead as well.
There are other drinks as well like strawberry milk, caramel milk, lassi, juices, sodas, teas and even coffee floats or soda floats which are very popular in Japan and a must-try at least once.
For January 2024, they have a beautiful blue dragon curry to celebrate the year of the dragon, as well as gluten-free yuzu pancakes, yuzu soda, yuzu soda float and yuzu tea, but more on that later.
My Experience
So far, I ate at Vegan Café PQ´s twice and I plan on going there again and again because the food is just too good!
Kaki Curry
The first time I went there I had a curry with kaki (persimmon), a popular fruit eaten in Japan especially during autumn. The dish looked amazing! The curry had a deep orange color with little yellow and black hearts drawn onto it. In the middle was seasoned rice and then very thinly sliced kaki on it, looking like a beautiful mandala. The kaki then was topped with creamy coconut cream and herbs.
It tasted like Japanese curries (which I love), but the kaki added a sweet note and a good texture. It went with the curry so well, I didn’t expect that before. Also, normally I personally can’t eat coconut cream in savory food because it gives me stomach issues, but in this case it was completely fine!
The curry always comes with some appetizers on the side, like tofu egg, or carrots or other veggies.
White Christmas Curry
For December, they had a white Christmas curry which looked christmassy indeed and was with apple. It had a light grayish color, with green and yellow twines painted on. Round, deep red pommenagrate seeds added some red color, looking like Christmas tree ornaments. The apple again was sliced thinly and placed on the rice beautifully, topped with more pommengrate seeds and rosemary which resembled a small Christmas tree. The spice sprinkled on top looked a bit like glitter. There was also one strong spice in it which I can’t pin down what it was, but it was so good!
Christmas Pancakes
The Christmas pancakes I had at PQ´s seriously were the most delicious dessert I ever had! The pancakes themselves were super fluffy and came with lots of toppings like the sweetest and vanilliest vanilla pudding, amazing ice cream which I don’t know what flavor it was, but it tasted a bit salty and not very sweet. Besides that there was delicious maple syrup and a bit of sourness adding apple sauce, balancing all the flavors and making the dish perfect for Christmas time.
They don’t have the exact same pancakes anymore now that December is over, but they have other ones, so I think it’s definitely worth checking them out!
New Year’s Blue Dragon Curry
The New Year’s Blue Dragon Curry is their seasonal curry for January 2024 and has a detailed dragon painted on it and looks sooo beautiful! Depending on when you are reading this blog post, you might still be able to try it, which I highly recommend!
I´m really excited for the year of the dragon in generell as I used to love dragons when I was a child, so I really wanted to try the curry. I mean, doesn’t it look absolutely stunning? I can’t imagine how much work it must be to paint a dragon onto the curry, especially because it has so many details. The blue color comes from butterfly pea flowers and therefore is natural. The curry flavor was mild and super creamy! In the middle of the curry was a salty blue colored daikon (Japanese radish) which looked like a diamond and the yellow rice was in a half moon shape, adding 3D effects to the dish. So far, this was my favorite curry because of all the amazing details.
Yuzu Soda Float
This is also a January special, so maybe you can still have it.
As we don´t have soda floats in Germany, the idea of adding ice cream to soda at first seemed really strange to me. But since they are common in Japan and vegan versions are reare, I wanted to try it. The yuzu ice cram was super creamy and had the perfect sweetness. There were pieces of yuzu peel in it which added a nice color and some freshness to the taste. The soda itself was not that sweet eighter, but the yuzu peel pieces on the bottom tasted really sweet which was nice. I guess they were soaked in some syrup beforehand.
Caramel Latte
Caramel latte used to be my favorite at Starbucks before I became vegan, so I was excited to see it on PQ's menu! If you pay a little extra, you can have it with cute latte art in form of a puppy on top. The caramel sauce came separately so that I could pour it on top myself. This way it is easy to control how much of it goes inside, depending on how sweet you like it.
Price Range:
550¥ - 2000¥
Curry: 2000¥
Hours:
Thursday &Friday 11:00 -17:00Saturday & Sunday 10:00 – 17:00Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays
Address:
1 Chome-1-2 Ryusen, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0012, Japan
Instagram:
Reservations:
Places to visit near-by:
Ōtori Shrine
Right across the street from PQ´s, you can find Ōtori Shrine, which is famous for its Tori-no-ichi festival held in November. The deity worshipped here is Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, who was the 12th Emperor of Japan in the Yamato dynasty. The shrine is lesser known, so there are not many tourists and it has a unique main entrances decorated beautifully. Furthermore, ihre is a big red Torii gate. So, it is definitely worth a visit!
Imado Shrine
Many of you might know the famous temple Gotokuji, but did you know there is a similar shrine in Asakusa? Imado Shrine is a 20 min walk away from PQ´s and famous for their maneki neko and match-making. Maneki neko are usually found in stores, and are basically white cats waving their paw in order to invite in good luck. I’m sure you have seen them before. It is believed the stories about Maneki Neko originated in Imado.
It is originally a Hachiman shrine and apparently a great samurai named Minamoto no Yoshiie visited the area in 1063 and 1081 to thank Hachiman, the god of war, for his victories in battles. Later the shrine was combined another shrine and instead of Hachiman the important deities Izanagi, Izanami and Fukurokuji are enshrined there ever since. Today, most people go there to pray for a suitable spouse, good luck or business success.
Sources:
Check out my Kyoto Sightseeing x Vegan Food guides
