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Cocoichibanya\u2019s bakery is hiding in plain sight in Shinjuku<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Coco Ichibanya<\/strong>, also known as Cocoichi<\/strong> for short, is Japan\u2019s most popular curry rice restaurant chain<\/a>. But Cocoichi doesn\u2019t just make curry rice, it also makes bread<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean that you can walk into any old Cocoichi restaurant and order bread from the menu, though. You\u2019ll need to seek out a branch of its sister chain, Spice Up! Cocoichi Bakery<\/strong>. Previously, the only place to find them was in Cocoichi\u2019s home prefecture of Aichi but there\u2019s also a Spice Up! Cocoichi Bakery location in downtown Tokyo\u2019s Shinjuku district<\/strong>, not far from the SoraNews24 offices.<\/p>\n Their baked goods aren\u2019t exactly cheap. The standard pork curry bread<\/strong> is 350 yen (US$2.40), quite a bit more than you\u2019d pay for curry bread at a convenience store, and even a bit pricy by bakery\/specialty shop standards. The other items we picked up on our bread run also came at a premium: black hashed beef bread<\/strong> (440 yen), cheese curry bread<\/strong> (390 yen), fried sweet bean bread with soft mochi<\/strong> (290 yen), and sakura mochi fried sweet bean bread<\/strong> (350 yen).<\/p>\n To see if their quality justified their high prices, we started our tasting with the most expensive of the bunch, the black hashed beef bread<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This bread gets its eye-catching color from a liberal amount of edible bamboo charcoal<\/strong> being kneaded into the dough, and the luxurious ingredients include red wine<\/strong> and demi-glace sauce<\/strong> too. Slicing the bun in half with a knife for a pre-bite interior inspection, we were happy to see nice, big pieces of beef inside, not just sauce.<\/p>\n We were then even happier when we took a taste. The black hashed beef bread was rich and flavorful, yet also expertly balanced in its flavor profile, neither too sweet nor too spicy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n High quality and wonderfully balanced flavor turned out to be the running theme of Spice Up! Cocoichi Bakery\u2019s wares<\/strong>. The curry bread was excellent, but we\u2019d sort of expected that given Cocoichi\u2019s curry restaurant pedigree, but the big surprise was that even the dessert breads, the ones filled with mochi and sweet bean paste, were great, with an enticing chewy texture to their mochi centers.<\/p>\n So while there\u2019s no getting around the fact that Spice Up! Cocoichi Bakery\u2019s bread is expensive, after eating it we can\u2019t really say it feels overpriced when it\u2019s this good.<\/p>\n Shop information<\/strong> Photos \u00a9 SoraNews24<\/em> Cocoichibanya\u2019s bakery is hiding in plain sight in Shinjuku. Coco Ichibanya, also known as Cocoichi for short, is Japan\u2019s most popular curry rice restaurant chain. But Cocoichi doesn\u2019t just make…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/CB-2.jpg?w=640\")
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\nSpice Up! Cocoichi Bakery
\nAttached to Cocoichibanya Shinjuku Eru Tower branch
\nAddress: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Nishi Shinjuku 1-6-1, Shinjuku Eru Tower basement level 2
\n\u6771\u4eac\u90fd\u65b0\u5bbf\u533a\u897f\u65b0\u5bbf\u4e00\u4e01\u76ee6\u756a1\u53f7\u65b0\u5bbf\u30a8\u30eb\u30bf\u30ef\u30fcB2\u968e
\nWebsite<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"