Why you should experience Au Temps Jadis in Tokyo, Japan.
Au Temps Jadis is a captivating crΓͺperie where Jinnan's fashion culture, French-country interiors, a brick-lined courtyard and the cooking traditions of Brittany preserve an unusually complete corner of France amid Central Shibuya.
Set along Yellow Street near Fire-dori and just steps from Shibuya Parco, the restaurant descends beneath a brick arch into a room of dark timber, red gingham tablecloths, antique furnishings and a small courtyard centered on a fountain. The building developed around the French-country aesthetic of interiors company Many, placing the crΓͺperie inside a larger world of imported tableware, textiles and decorative objects that once extended through the floors above it. Buckwheat galettes and dessert crΓͺpes complete that physical composition with food rooted in Brittany, accompanied by cider in the regional pairing traditionally associated with galettes. The result is a Jinnan crΓͺperie where architecture, furnishings and Breton cooking have preserved the character of the original concept through four decades of immense change across Shibuya.
What you should know about Au Temps Jadis.
Au Temps Jadis is best known for introducing Breton crΓͺperie culture to Shibuya through Many, the French-country interiors company associated with president Yoshimi Yamada and a broader project joining food, tableware and domestic design. Many had established the white-cotton shop La SoirΓ©e in 1981 before creating Au Temps Jadis in 1985 as both a mercerie and salon, bringing its interest in French textiles, antiques and household objects into direct contact with cooking. The crΓͺperie concentrated that idea on buckwheat galettes, dessert crΓͺpes and cider from Brittany, becoming an early Japanese specialist in a regional French tradition that was still far less familiar in Tokyo than conventional crΓͺpes. Many expanded the lineage in 2006 through Galettoria, another Shibuya crΓͺperie centered on galettes and French-country design, extending a concept first developed at Au Temps Jadis more than two decades earlier. Chef Taku Hatakeyama subsequently became the third-generation crΓͺpier responsible for the griddle, carrying the restaurant's cooking through another period of its long life. Au Temps Jadis entered Japanese culinary publishing in 2014 through Galette to CrΓͺpe Senmonten no Recipe-chΕ, a dedicated volume from Seibundo Shinkosha covering basic galette technique, folding methods, vegetable, seafood and meat preparations, dessert crΓͺpes and the tableware associated with serving them. Many, Yoshimi Yamada and Taku Hatakeyama connect the restaurant's French-country origins with a sustained culinary practice that helped establish Breton galettes as a distinct restaurant tradition in Tokyo.
A buckwheat galette begins with the griddle, where thin batter develops a toasted surface and pliant center before its edges crisp around fillings such as ham, egg and cheese in the classic complΓ¨te. Salt-butter caramel crΓͺpe shifts from buckwheat toward wheat batter, letting browned butter, caramel and a thin folded crΓͺpe carry the meal into dessert without abandoning the griddle technique at the center of the kitchen. Cider joins the galette through a Breton pairing that lets apple acidity cut across melted cheese, egg yolk and the deeper flavor of buckwheat before sweeter crΓͺpes arrive. Taku Hatakeyama's work at the griddle keeps those preparations tied to a specialist craft built through successive generations of crΓͺpiers, with thinness, browning and folding determining the texture of the finished plate. Au Temps Jadis keeps the pleasure concentrated on a small set of techniques, allowing buckwheat, butter, caramel, cheese and cider to carry the Breton character that first distinguished the restaurant in Shibuya.
How to fold Au Temps Jadis into your trip.
Au Temps Jadis works as the dining anchor for an afternoon tracing Jinnan and its northern edge through a medieval shrine transformed by postwar reconstruction, among Japan's great feats of twentieth-century engineering and a private museum built around international contemporary art.
Begin at Kitaya Inari Shrine, whose history reaches to the fifteenth century through a tradition connecting Tanaka Sanuki-no-kami Naotaka with its establishment between 1469 and 1487. Fire destroyed the shrine during the May 25, 1945 air raid, postwar occupation briefly removed access to its grounds, and reconstruction preceded Kiyonori Kikutake's radically new 1997 sanctuary using colored stainless steel within a centuries-old religious site. Continue to Yoyogi National Gymnasium, where Kenzo Tange collaborated with structural engineer Yoshikatsu Tsuboi on the suspended-roof complex created for swimming and basketball at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Two immense support pylons and suspension cables freed the principal arena from conventional internal columns, producing a structural achievement that became one of Tange's most internationally influential works. Conclude at Watarium Art Museum, where Shizuko Watari transformed the international relationships developed through Galerie Watari into a private museum opened in 1990 inside a building by Swiss architect Mario Botta. Connections with Nam June Paik and Keith Haring preceded a program that brought artists including Joseph Beuys, Larry Clark and Mike Kelley into the institution's continuing engagement with contemporary art. The progression moves from Kiyonori Kikutake's reconstruction of a centuries-old shrine through Kenzo Tange and Yoshikatsu Tsuboi's Olympic engineering into Shizuko Watari and Mario Botta's international art institution, revealing the successive generations of design and cultural exchange surrounding Au Temps Jadis.
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