Marco Polo Bakery & Cafe

Marco Polo bakery and café in Awase is a great place to people watch, and get your bread fix at the same time.

Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the café of 28 tables plus an outdoor patio provides a spacious atmosphere to watch the bustle of the bakery, and to smell the chocolate desserts and fresh bread being pulled out of the stone oven.

Breakfast is served from 8 am to 11:30, with options for sandwiches, French toast, and even soup. The lunch menu includes a new selection of four different pastas, a soup of the day, plus sandwiches, burgers (¥750—¥830), pizzas (¥1500), and a calzone(¥1200). The 15 cm pizzas and 30 cm calzone each take about 20 minutes to cook. The generous portion of fresh creamy broccoli soup was perfect for the drizzly day, served with a scone and side of strawberry jam, though a basket of fresh bread was also an option. We did enjoy a basket of bread that came with sausage and vegetable pasta in tomato sauce, but the pasta dish, which included hot dogs for the sausages, was a bit disappointing—we expected more of an Italian sausage.

Juice, coffee, and sodas are also available (¥200), as well as draft beer (¥350) and wine by the bottle (¥1200). The caramel cappuccino (¥350) was medium-bodied, slightly sweet, not bitter at all. We’d like to try the latté (¥220) next time.

The established bakery is Marco Polo’s gem, and attracts so many customers that a yellow line is taped around the checkout counter for when there’s a flood of customers. The bakery offers a smorgasbord of tempting cakes, donuts, loaves of bread, and desserts, and even soups to go. The café’s lunch menu can also be ordered to go, and we hear that late at night, many of the bakery items are offered at a discount, to make room for the next day’s batch of goodies.

¥ and $