Cidernaut

– Not far along from Bunkamura along the Kamiyama shopping street in Shibuya, Cidernaut is a new, pretty spacious bar with a cider focus, providing something that I think is pretty unique in Tokyo. Given that we are still social distancing somewhat in Japan, I’m not sure if the seating situation will remain the same, but at the moment there are seats at the bar for five and tables for maybe 20 more. The doors open out onto Kamiyama street and I’d imagine that when / if things get back to normal, this would be a pretty popular place to hang out. 

– 11 taps, eight of cider and three of beer, two of which were Japanese craft and the other a UK import from an interesting brewery. As this is Tokyo Beer Drinker, I’ll only briefly gloss over the cider as I don’t know much about it, but there were imports from the US and the UK along with a couple of Japanese ciders. You can check their Facebook for a tap list (updated daily). Ciders and beers are served in three sizes, half, medium and pint. We had the medium and it was bigger than I expected from the name. I’d guess somewhere between 350-400ml but I’m not good at judging. This makes me think that the half and pint are probably UK measures, but this is just a guess. Prices ranged from ¥690-¥990 for the half, ¥990-¥1390 for the medium and ¥1190-¥1740. I can’t really comment on cider pricing, but I’d definitely have to say that the beers were definitely on the pricey side. But I guess you’re probably not going to come here just to drink beer are you? They also had some bottles and cans of cider available.

– There was no cover charge, but tax was not included in these prices which adds a bit more onto what was already quite high prices. I think given the location and the current situation it’s understandable that this isn’t a cheap place. The place is no smoking and they have some interesting sounding bagels as food. There didn’t seem to be a veggie one though. I couldn’t find wifi. They are open during the day (everyday from 15:00 I think but google says 12:00…), and it was quite nice to have a couple of ciders in a relatively empty bar in the daytime. This definitely says more about me than the bar though. I don’t know if cashless payment is a big thing yet, but if you’re interested, they take paypay. But if you don’t have a Japanese Apple store account, I don’t think you can download that app anyway so maybe this is all a waste of time to mention.

As I’ve said many times above, I’m nowhere near an expert on cider so I can’t really talk about that too much. I enjoyed coming here but perhaps the prices will be sightly off-putting for some. Approaching from a beer point of view, they are definitely high. The doors opening onto Kamiyama street made for a pleasant atmosphere on a reasonably warm day. The staff were nice and friendly and were able to give suggestions and tips about ciders. I feel that for me, it may be something like a Belgian bar in Tokyo experience, in that it’s not somewhere I’m going to go every week, but it is possibly a nice treat from time to time. But like I said, I’m a klutz when it comes to cider so maybe people who know more will have different opinions. As I always seem to say on here, it’s nice that somewhere new has something a little different about it, rather than being more of the same. I suspect that in these difficult financial times, the places that will survive will be the ones that offer something unique.

Yggdrasil
AJB