Japan is home to a bunch of limited-time collaboration cafés featuring all sorts of anime and video game franchises. For my trip to Japan, I was lucky enough to have an active Quintessential Quintuplets collaboration during my visit here.
Sweets Paradise is known for hosting themed cafes of a lot of popular shows throughout the years (Spy x Family, Tokyo Revengers, Blue Archive, etc.), so after finding out they had a TQQ collab, I made sure to book tables for it as fast as possible. Now that I’ve tried it out, let’s see if the place is worth visiting as a fan of the series. How Good Was the Quintessential Quintuplets Café Actually?
__________
🏠 Store Decor 🏠
The Quintessential Quintuplets Café is located on the 8th Floor at Shinjuku Marui Annex. Once you head up to the 8th floor, it should be easy to spot where the restaurant is.
Outside the store, the store is decorated with some café-exclusive artwork, as well as display stands of all five of the quintuplets.
While not as fully immersive as some of the larger (permanent) themed cafes, the interior of the Quintessential Quintuplets Café is decorated with posters with scenes from the movie, as well as some tapestries and chibi stands featuring collaboration artwork.
And to top the whole experience off, you’ll also hear some promotional videos playing in the background – including the trailer for the movie, as well as the shortened trailer version of the movie’s ending theme – Arigatou no Hana. (No soundtracks from older seasons, unfortunately.)
__________
📋 Menu and Ordering System 📋
After confirming your reservation, you’ll be given a menu and an ordering sheet while the staff prepares your table. The main courses here feature both savory and sweet dishes, so if you want to have them served at different times, you can check the red boxes by the desserts to let the staff know.
Side Note: Like most themed cafés, there’s a time limit to how long you can dine in (70 minutes here.) Since the main courses can take a little while to prepare, you’re only allowed to order mains during your first set of orders, while additional drinks are available for order up ‘till 30 minutes before your time runs out.
Here’s what my friend and I got during our visit (Why don’t you guess our favorite quintuplets, if it wasn’t obvious.)
__________
🦋 Nino’s Blueberry Pancakes (¥1,400) 🦋
Nino’s main course features a stack of pancakes, served with some strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, maple syrup, and grape ice, topped with blueberry sauce, whipped cream, and a Nino monaka wafer.
A dish that’s complex, with a mix of sweet and sour. Certainly fits Nino, that’s for sure.
If you remember the Last Festival arc of the series, you’d probably expect some fluffy pancakes here. And while the pancakes here are indeed fluffier than your standard ones, they’re unfortunately not of the soufflé variety here.
Story-accuracy aside, it’s overall not a bad dish. The pancakes are a little on the drier side, but between the sweetness of the syrup, the tanginess of the berries and sauce, plus a little creaminess from the (thick) whipped cream, the overall combination balances it out well.
Special mention to the Grape Ice. Grape isn’t a really common ice cream / sorbet flavor (at least, not that I’m aware of,) so I was really surprised with how bright the flavor was! Definitely my favorite element of the entire dish.
__________
🍀 Yotsuba’s Mandarin Parfait (¥1,400) 🍀
Yotsuba’s Parfait features a tower of ice cream with Mandarin oranges, topped with cornflakes, whipped cream, orange syrup, and two monaka wafers – one of Yotsuba, and one of her ribbon.
Flavor-wise, my friend says it’s quite the good orange parfait. There’s the sweetness from the ice cream, some brightness from the Mandarin orange, and some added crunch in the cornflakes. Tying back to the character, the flavor profile here symbolizes Yotsuba’s character perfectly.
__________
🎧 Miku’s Blue Soda (¥800) 🎧
Miku’s Blue Soda is basically a Miku spin on sparkling lemonade – sparkling cider and blue syrup – topped with a lemon wedge and sugar pearls. It’s a really simple drink, but one that’s quite nice!
Minor nitpick, but I really wished her drink was some sort of Matcha Soda. *But* her drink has to be blue, so I can’t blame the store for it (Her main course does feature matcha though)
__________
⭐️ Itsuki’s Rosehip Tea (¥800) ⭐️
Here’s one of the two hot drinks at the store – Itsuki’s Rosehip Tea. Ingredients-wise, it’s essentially rosehip tea with some edible rose petals on top. Between all the desserts I got today, the more mellow flavors of the tea really serves as a nice contrast to the other sweeter flavors.
Side Note: As with all the other quintuplet’s drinks, each comes with their own paper hanger. These obviously aren’t edible like the monaka wafers, so don’t forget to take these home as a little souvenir.
__________
☕ Character Art Latte (Gratte) (¥700) ☕
Say you’re not sure which of the quintuplet’s drinks you wanna get? Why not let luck decide who to go for? (Or, I suppose, if you just want a hot drink.)
Their Character Art Latte (or Gratte) features a choice between coffee or hot chocolate, decorated with some milk foam and a printed graphic of one of the Nakano quintuplets – chosen at random.
Other than the art, the drink itself is essentially just a latte, so if you’re in the mood for some, maybe order this and play a little Quintuplets Game as a bonus. We got Itsuki for our order, and although I wish it was Ichika to round off the quintuplets, it seemed fitting that this drink goes to the quintuplet represented by coffee during the movie’s vending machine scene.
Which character you end up getting is completely random, but if you order five cups, maybe the staff will be nice and give you one of each. Well, at least I hope, since I saw a customer ordering five of these and nothing else during my visit.
__________
🛍 Free Collaboration Goods 🛍
Upon entering the café, you’ll be given an A4 sized paper placemat featuring some café-exclusive artwork. You could use it as intended and put your plates on top of it, but… its limited edition merch, put it off to the side and keep it as a little souvenir. You’ll get a random selection of 2 placemat designs (Regular and Chibi Art), but if you’re dining with 2+ people, it looks like they’ll give you one of each, from what I’ve observed. (Side Note: Maybe bring over a file or something, you don’t wanna fold the placemat, after all.)
Other than the placemats, every item you order will also come with a random paper drink coaster (10 designs, featuring a normal and chibi art of each of the quintuplets.) I was lucky enough to not get any duplicates in my first order (Ichika, Nino, Itsuki, Chibi Miku), although I did get a 2nd Ichika when I ordered Itsuki’s Tea. If you ever get duplicates (or designs you don’t like,) you could probably go around and ask the other customers for a trade.
__________
🛍 Collaboration Merchandise 🛍
While you wait for your orders to arrive, why not stop by the collaboration store and grab some café-exclusive merchandise!
There’s quite the wide selection here, from three sizes of acrylic stands, tapestries, can badges, mugs, pillow covers, and bromide cards.
You can only purchase these items on the day of your visit, so make sure to grab everything you want before leaving the restaurant.
As for us? We got ourselves an acrylic stand of Nino and Yotsuba, along with one 2x bromide card blindbox each – just for fun. We’ve had some below-average luck when it comes to blindboxes for this series (see the double Ichika coasters above.) But I’ll admit that we were pleasantly surprised to get exactly the two characters we wanted out of our own blindboxes – Nino and Itsuki for me, and Yotsuba and Miku for my friend.
Side Note: Even with several limitations in place (same-day purchase and quantity limits,) a lot of the items here can sell out really fast. If you want to maximize the chances of getting the merch you want, consider booking a table as early into the event as you can. I arrived on the 2nd weekend of this 5-week collab, and even then, about half of the items have already sold out.
__________
📱 How to Reserve a Table 📱
For Sweets Paradise collaborations, you’ll need to reserve seats in advance through their app. Once you create an account, head over to the Reserve section, choose your store and collaboration, select a date, and – after everything’s confirmed through email – present your reservation and membership card at the store.
If you can read Japanese, the process should be straightforward enough. But if you’re like me and can’t… Google Translate comes in *real* handy. The whole process took me about 15 minutes to complete.
__________
⭐VERDICT⭐
So how good was The Quintessential Quintuplets Café actually? I mean, the food’s quite nice, but honestly though… Do you really care if the food is good? (As long as it’s edible, of course.)
If you’re like me, you’re here for the Nakano quintuplets, and you order based on the characters you like. As long as you’re a fan of the Quintessential Quintuplets, it’s very difficult to come out of here feeling disappointed. And while the collab here has already finished, have a look at Sweets Paradise’s future collabs when you visit Japan. If there’s a franchise you like being featured, you can expect quite an exciting visit – with some pretty good food as an added bonus!
__________
🚗HOW TO GET THERE 🚗
Sweets Paradise hosts several collaborations simultaneously between their different stores, but the Quintessential Quintuplets collab that I went to was at the Shinjuku Marui Annex. Once you arrive at Shinjuku Station, head over to the South Exit, and the mall should be about a 7 minute walk from the station.
Alternatively, if you’re taking either the Marunochi, Fukutoshin, or Shinjuku Line, you can exit the metro at Shinjuku-Sanchome Station. Once at the station, head towards the C4 Exit, and the building should be a couple of minutes away.
The Quintessential Quintuplets Café (Sweets Paradise)
🌏 Location 🌏
3 Chome-1-26 Shinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 160-0022, Japan (Shinjuku Marui Annex, 8th Floor)
🗺 Map 🗺
https://goo.gl/maps/coENrbSvs9w6xaDn6
⏰ Opening Hours ⏰
11 A.M. to 9 P.M.
💻 Website 💻
https://www.sweets-paradise.jp/
📖 Current & Upcoming Collaborations 📖
https://www.sweets-paradise.jp/collaboration/
__________
💬 Parting Words 💬
It’s May 5th, 2023 today – the Nakano quintuplet’s birthdays and also the actual wedding date of the series. I wasn’t planning on doing an overview here (hence the difference in photo quality), but I suppose I’ll make an exception to celebrate one of my favorite franchise’s most important day. The café was quite the unique experience, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Hopefully there’s another TQQ collab the next time I visit Japan. Thanks for the read, and I’ll be seeing you next week!
