Maison Kitsune, the 23-year-old Parisian label behind Cafe Kitsune, was ahead of its time in merging fashion, food and music. The brand – founded by former Daft Punk manager Gildas Loaëc and designer Masaya Kuroki – expanded into hospitality with Cafe Kitsune 11 years ago. As a record label, it helped define the indie-electronica sound of the early 2000s, putting out music by artists including Bloc Party, Cut Copy, Hot Chip and Phoenix, and today represents bands like Parcels and Two Door Cinema Club. Every new concept and branch is a continuation of the French Japanese business’s commitment to nurturing artists and culture.
“French and Japanese culinary philosophies might differ in form, but they speak the same emotional language: one of care, craftsmanship and sensory pleasure,” Johanna Lellouche, managing director of the Kitsune Cafe group, tells Broadsheet. “It’s a sensibility that runs through everything we do.”
That holds for the group’s latest cafe, which has just opened in Covent Garden. It’s London’s second Cafe Kitsune – the first launched in 2020 in Belgravia’s striking Pantechnicon building – and joins more than 35 other outposts globally.
The new Cafe Kitsune, on Monmouth Street, offers specialty coffee and chai, iced matcha lattes and iced strawberry matcha lattes. The brand’s signature fox cookies (kitsune translates as “fox”) are here, as well as pastries incorporating influences from France and Japan: a hazelnut-miso cookie, a savoury pain suisse and pistachio croissants. There are also seasonal treats, like a matcha and raspberry financier and yuzu and honey lattes, plus quirky merch depicting the cafe’s signature fox. Occasional in-house DJ sets nod to the brand’s musical pillar.
Cafe Kitsune has been serving matcha since the concept first launched 2014 – long before the green tea became a social media mainstay. It sources its matcha directly from Uji, near Kyoto. “[It’s] a region known for its excellence,” says Lellouche.
Despite its global reach, Cafe Kitsune’s venues aren’t cookie-cutter. Its expansion has been careful and considered, with each cafe carrying a distinctive bicultural aesthetic that fits its surroundings. That duality comes through in the 15-seat, split-level venue. At street level, a light timber counter – which echoes the one at the brand’s Beijing cafe – takes up one side of the room, while on the other a handful of onyx marble tables run parallel to seating built into a room-length window. The lower level offers a cosy, hidden retreat, with artwork, bookshelves, and deep green and warm wood tones energised with orange cushions.
“It’s a place to slow down and savour the moment,” says Lellouche. “We want people to feel like they’ve entered a calm, intentional space in the middle of the city.”
Cafe Kitsune Covent Garden 55 Monmouth Street, London WC2H 9DG
Hours: Daily 10am–6pm
