We were greeted by the guy who's probably the owner - and he was pretty gruff (but may have just been playing the "vampire" part, as he was pretty well decked out). The servers are all dressed in gothic maid outfits - my wife may have gotten a picture of one of them, but I'm still waiting for her iPhone pics. I'll update this post if I ever get them.
The restaurant itself is predictably dark and all red and black, with each booth curtained for privacy. There's not that much to take pictures of, honestly - there is one communal table in the middle, and this coffin (excuse the smeared lens):
All the food is kind of cutely gothic in presentation, in the way Japanese gothic anything is.
That's obviously the dessert menu - and sorry for the blurrycam, my picture taking skills were not at their best this night!
Our appetizers. Coffin-shaped garlic bread, which I thought was pretty neat, and some kind of sushi thing for my wife, in the shape of a cross.
My spaghetti carbonara, with a bat tortilla in the middle. (I don't think you're really meant to eat it; it's just decoration.)
And our fairly impressive dessert, complete with sugar work. I'm actually not sure how this is supposed to be vampire themed but I guess the sauce is meant to be blood. The sugar work looks like butterfly wings, though. But it definitely looks tasty in any case. I want to eat it again just looking at the picture.
We both joked about the fact that it has corn flakes in it - ever since our visit to Maid Station and its corn flake-based tiramisu, we expect that from every themed restaurant we go to in Tokyo. In this case, though, the corn flakes actually added a nice crunch to what would otherwise be a single-texture dessert.
You don't really go to a place like this for the food but overall it was actually surprisingly good and not too expensive. Our total bill for my wife and me was under ¥6,000 - about $60 - for everything, including drinks. I've read complaints from others about the prices but I really don't understand how you could spend $100 for two people here, unless that was in the days of 78 yen exchange rates (but then your complaint is not really with the restaurant).
I feel like the atmosphere is surprisingly a little more forced, and actually a little old and ragged by Japanese standards. Also, the service was really slow - even after ringing our table bell several times, we often ended up having to just grab a waitress as she walked by.
Not sure it's worth going back, but it was a fun way to kill an evening.
Definitely make reservations if you plan on going - several people were turned away outright as we were waiting for our reserved table.
VAMPIRE CAFE
6-7-6 Ginza Chuo, Tokyo 104-0061, Japan
+81 3-3289-5360
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