Tokyo's Newest Dessert Trend: High-Quality Sweet Crepes

Equally, ØC tokyo, Crepe & Espresso Jiyugata

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東京西部｜東京南部

自由が丘｜代々木｜下北沢

Cheap takeout crepes have been popular in Tokyo for years, but a new trend is sweeping the city: high-quality, authentic crepes. A number of cafes have cropped up in recent years that sell these premium desserts.

Crepes that are beautifully fashioned by professional chefs, authentic crepes made using ingredients whose quality you can taste, and photogenic crepes that are popular on social media are increasingly drawing attention. If you're looking for a high-quality dessert, stop by these cafes while enjoying a stroll through Tokyo.

Beautiful crepes designed by a pastry chef — Equally

Tokyo's latest obsession is sweet crepes that are as beautiful as they are delicious. If you're interested, visit Equally in the Gotokuji neighborhood. These crepes were designed and perfected by chef Koichi Tomono, who trained as a pastry chef at a popular patisserie in Tokyo.

Tomono says he originally planned to open a French pastry shop that also sold crepes. But after testing his recipes and trying different ideas, he was able to make particularly delicious crepes. So he decided to open a crepe shop instead. He puts his pastry-making skills to use by making beautiful crepes that combine the features of desserts such as baked goods and parfaits.

Tomono's crepes include authentic French crepes that are eaten with a fork and knife, as well as handheld cone-shaped crepes filled with whipped cream. All are made from high-quality ingredients chosen with a chef's expert eye, combined in ways that bring out their flavor.

For example, Tomono mixes Japanese and French flour to make the batter and develops different flavors of cream to use with different toppings. He cooks the batter differently for different styles of crepe, so handheld ones will be perfectly soft and French ones perfectly crunchy around the edges.

His signature item is the seasonal specialty crepe, which changes every month or so. It's a beautiful cone-shaped concoction featuring seasonal fruits, sometimes decorated with edible gold leaf and piled high with ingredients and whipped cream. Dig in and you'll find that the taste changes as you eat it, almost like a parfait: different layers feature different toppings mixed into the crepe, so each bite is a delicious new discovery.

We recommend this seasonal specialty, as well as the store's sugar butter crepe and crepe brulee, which is a cone-shaped crepe with creme brulees in the center.

The store's location in Gotokuji makes it the perfect place to take a break while sightseeing. This residential neighborhood is close to popular areas such as Shinjuku and Shimo-Kitazawa, full of greenery, and home to its namesake, Gotokuji Temple. The temple is popular among tourists and locals alike because of the thousands of ceramic cat figurines, or maneki neko, that decorate its grounds. If you're a cat lover or simply looking for some good luck, visit Gotokuji for the crepes and cat figurines.

Sugar butter crepes made with high-quality ingredients — ØC tokyo

One of Tokyo's current crepe trends is sugar butter crepes made from quality ingredients. And the sugar butter crepes served at ØC tokyo in Yoyogi-Uehara are particularly well-regarded because they're made from the best ingredients available.

This crepe store only uses ingredients from animals kept in natural, humane environments, and plants grown without agrochemicals. The store gathers the best ingredients available in Tokyo, using flour from Kyushu and butter from New Zealand. The eggs come from free-range chickens, the pasteurized milk is hormone-free, and the sugar is processed in Japan using an old method that leaves it a light brown color.

These ingredients were carefully picked by chef Masaki Tai, who developed the store's crepe recipe while living in Denmark. He makes his choices so meticulously because he believes that ingredients such as vegetables and grains taste best when they're closest to their natural state. He serves sugar butter crepes since they showcase the taste of the ingredients so clearly.

The store's sugar butter crepe is the ultimate simple crepe. With only a few ingredients, the quality of each one is immediately apparent when you bite in. The crepe itself is a soft golden-brown color with lightly crunchy edges. It's slightly sweet but not sugary, with a strong taste of butter. The crunch of the sugar granules and the crepe's edges accent the spongy, soft, chewy texture of the rest of the crepe.

Meanwhile, the azuki butter crepe tastes just like a wagashi, or traditional Japanese confection. It's full of red bean paste made in-house, which provides texture and light sweetness, and dusted with a bitter green powder made from yomogi, or Japanese mugwort. These ingredients pair beautifully with the strong taste of butter, all held together by the spongy crepe.

ØC tokyo is in Yoyogi-Uehara, a neighborhood known for its excellent, stylish restaurants and cafes. You can enjoy exploring the whole area on a food tour. Or you can walk to ØC tokyo after shopping or strolling in popular nearby neighborhoods such as Shimo-Kitazawa and Shibuya.

Crunchy crepes topped with Dubai chocolate — Crepe & Espresso Jiyugata

In Jiyugaoka, a stylish neighborhood popular with shoppers, you'll find a cute little store: Crepe & Espresso Jiyugata. Its crepes are an example of a new Tokyo trend: photogenic desserts that are popular on social media. It opened in March 2025 as the fourth crepe store in a popular bakery chain called Bread, Espresso &.

The crepe stores were born from a collaboration between Bread, Espresso & and "buzz gourmet creator" Wolf, a content creator with 3.8 million followers who's known for viral posts about food. The stores are known for deliciously crunchy crepes with a cute, melted chocolate design along the top that is instantly recognizable. Each of the crepe stores has an original menu item only available there, and for the Jiyugaoka location, it's the Dubai chocolate melt crepe.

Dubai chocolates are trendy, luxurious chocolates first made in Dubai that contain pistachio and kadaif, thin pastry noodles made from flour and water. They were chosen as the Jiyugaoka store's signature item because their luxurious taste matches the luxurious feel of the neighborhood. Staff members handmake the Dubai chocolates in-store and add them to the top of the crepes.

There is melted chocolate and whipped cream inside the crepes, along with the cream made from pistachio paste and kadaif that's used to make the chocolates. The crepes have a chocolate topping that's gone viral on social media for its cute, melted design. The rich chocolates and light whipped cream are the perfect pairing, and the crunchy crust of the crepe gives way to a slightly softer texture toward the middle. It's a rich, chocolatey, satisfying dessert.

The crepe batter is made using a recipe that was refined over the course of a year and a half. The store cooks crepes to a crunchy texture because it brings out the taste of the crepe itself, instead of just the ingredients. All crepes are folded into the same thick triangular shape, which is perfect for handheld eating. You can sit on the bench in the store and eat there or bring your crepe to an outdoor terrace on the building's third floor outside of a bakery in the same chain.

From Gotokuji to Yoyogi-Uehara to Jiyugaoka, high-quality crepe stores are cropping up across Tokyo. The carefully refined recipes and premium ingredients make for a delicious Tokyo dessert experience. Treat yourself to some time at one of these cafes, and you'll discover a world of sweet goodness.