The SG Group, the company behind some of Tokyo’s best cocktail bars, just keeps expanding. The newly opened Ash (whose name is stylised as 'æ') in Shibuya is the group’s first zero-waste café and bar.
Everything in Ash stays true to its concept of sustainability, including the clean, minimalist interior which has a feature wall adorned with leftover denim. Plus, Ash is paperless. The menu and point card are in digital formats while the café sells reusable takeout cups made from coffee husk.
For its coffee menu, Ash mainly uses its own house blend produced by resident barista Taka Ishitani, who is a two-time winner of the Japan Barista Championships (2017 and 2019). But there are other beans and blends on offer, too, from reputable local roasteries including Leaves Coffee Roasters and Obscura Roasters. The coffee goes especially well with the café’s coffee cherry canelé.
Aside from the usual black coffee, flat white and cortado, you can also upgrade your caffeine intake with a range of coffee cocktails like espresso martini. The Zero-Waste Classics, in particular, may look unassumingly like your regular time-honoured cocktails, but the martini and manhattan are made with discarded ingredients from other SG Group bars, such as herbs, spices and fruit. Used coffee grounds are also turned into cocktails, or given to Aoki Farm in Miura as fertilisers, instead of throwing them away.