This is the world's biggest Starbucks.
At 32,000 square feet, it's a four-story Roastery
overlooking the Meguro River in Tokyo, Japan.
Now, we're pretty lucky that it's quite quiet
here at the moment, because when this place first opened
three months ago, it had a five-hour-long queue,
and you needed a ticket to get in.
We've come to try some of the unique coffees
they have on the menu
and check out their one-of-a-kind tea and cocktail bars.
Let's go inside.
The site opened on February 28, 2019,
and it's close to the subway stops of Shibuya and Ebisu.
So how does it measure up to the others?
It overtakes the 30,000-square-foot Roastery in Shanghai.
The company has just three other Roasteries:
in Seattle, Milan, and New York City.
On the second floor is the Teavana tea bar.
Here, you can buy tea, as well as getting
some brightly colored hot drinks and cream sodas.
On the third floor is the Arriviamo bar,
serving wines, whiskeys, and cocktails.
The espresso martini here is made with chestnut liqueur.
Then at the top is the AMU Inspiration Lounge
hosting barista training.
It's really beautiful in here for a coffee shop.
There's an origami ceiling
that sits above the entire Roastery,
designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma,
the man behind the main host stadium
for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
There is a long terrace running around
the outside of the building.
It overlooks the Meguro River,
where cherry blossoms grow in the spring.
The menu here has over 100 items,
60 of which are unique to Japan.
The coffee is made in a similar way to other Roasteries.
At the base, the beans are roasted in a 17-meter-tall
copper coffee cask.
They're transported via glass and copper tubes
that snake through every floor.
More than 680,000 kilograms of coffee
will be roasted here for the Japanese market,
approximately 31 60-kilogram bags every day.
While other Roasteries might focus on espresso,
the Tokyo Starbucks prides itself
on its specific way of serving Americano.
This is the Americano con Crema,
which has a cinnamon-infused foam
and a line of demerara sugar.
That might look like ice cream,
but it's actually whipped milk.
This is signature low-fat milk for the Roastery here.
The brown sugar mixed in with it is,
yeah, the flavor of the milk is, like, absolutely gorgeous,
with coffee coming through.
The ground-floor bar has filter coffee,
coffee presses, and cold-brew taps.
There's a whiskey barrel-aged cold brew
and this nitro cold brew.
So in any Irish pub in the UK,
you can obviously get Guinness,
and this looks like a Guinness, and
this has got a bit of a beer flavor about it.
Tastes a little bit Guinnessy.
If you like Guinness, then you'll really like this.
This being Japan,
the cafe takes pride in serving tea.
There are 15 different types of tea-related
drinks and desserts, with unusual ingredients.
This is turmeric cotton candy.
So this is a chai tea at the bottom,
and then on top of it, it looks like you've gone
to the fun fair or something,
because there's actually a really big pillow
of turmeric cotton candy on the top of this.
But I'm gonna have to get in to the drink somehow,
which means going into it with these chopsticks.
Wow, that whole thing has just evaporated
inside of the coffee.
All of the sugar from the cotton candy
has gone straight inside that chai latte,
so now it's just like something I might pick up
at another Starbucks, turmeric latte.
The cocktail floor looks
just like a regular bar.
There's a selection of Japanese whiskeys here,
as well as international spirits.
The espresso martini is made with chestnut liqueur,
which gives it an extra sweet edge.
So what did we think after our visit?
It's true that you can't go two blocks in Tokyo
without seeing a Starbucks.
They are everywhere, as Japan has over 1,400 locations,
but it's definitely worth a trip to here
to have a cold brew and sit on the terrace,
even if you have to wait a little while for a seat.