Part café, part kitchen and part atelier, Otsu reinterprets breakfast and lunch, serves coffee and tries to find new ways to experience the familiar, with every detail designed to slow things down. It is in Poblenou and sells gift cards.
The food menu runs through Japan. The Tokyo Breakfast is warm rice with a slow-cooked egg, shaved bonito, fermented soybeans and a coffee broth. There are an egg sando and a kimchi sando on Japanese bread, onsen eggs with labneh on sourdough, a shiitake chowder, a miso caramel porridge and set and whipped yogurt with seasonal fruit. The sweets include banana bread, a seasonal cookie, a pain suisse and a cardamom bun glazed with April coffee. Breakfast and lunch run until mid-afternoon, after which the counter serves pastries and drinks.
The coffee is from April Coffee Roasters in Copenhagen. The drinks list covers espresso, cortado, americano or batch brew, latte, flat white and cappuccino, plus a “Hand Brew by April” with a menu that changes daily and a Special Hand Brew of a gesha from April. Beside the coffee there is a matcha range, including a coconut water matcha, a jujube date matcha and an Earl Grey matcha, a hojicha latte, chai, a yuzu lemonade and hot chocolate. Otsu does not roast; its coffee is roasted by April in Copenhagen.
Coffee on the shelf
- April Coffee Roasters espresso, batch brew and the hand-brew menu
Photograph: Otsu