Cute Chronicles – One Night at the Capcom Bar

Su-per happy fan-friendly food time!

I recently visited Tokyo and had the great privilege of visiting the Capcom Bar!

The Capcom Bar is more of an experience than a place to grab a quick drink. Organised in two-hour time slots, you have to sign up for a slot at the door. If there is available space, you could walk in partway through a slot but it’s a lot better, if you’re a fan, to sign up for a later slot and go there in time to experience the whole thing.

The bar itself is within a building which houses other entertainment venues. Behind an innocuous-looking door is a room with a bar and stools and some tables/booths. It’s small but not cramped. The walls are decorated with images from Capcom games while TVs play a loop of game adverts and footage. Near the entrance were some displays of special merchandise: Dragon’s Dogma statues and some collaboration t-shirts between Capcom, King of Games and New Japan Wrestling. At the time, the walls were covered with Ace Attorney 5 character art which also made me very happy! To finish things off, Monster Hunter plushie cushions dotted the seats.

Once we sat down in our allotted seats, we had a brief introduction. The most important parts were photos allowed but no video, last food orders 30 minutes before the end, last merchandise orders one hour before the end. Oh and “don’t forget to have fun”!

To order, you mark your choices on a slip of paper and hand it to a very enthusiastic member of staff. The menu was themed mostly around Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Ace Attorney and Street Fighter with a variety of drinks and light snacks, dishes and desserts. I didn’t have the time, the stomach space or the finances to order everything I wanted – the bar is rather painfully cash-only – but what I did manage to order was pretty awesome.

First up was a Phoenix Wright drink and a Franziska von Karma drink, both appropriately coloured and Franziska’s came with coloured fruity ice stars. As for food, I wasn’t sure why Chun Li’s themed dish was egg fried rice with chilli prawns until I realised what a kick it packed. My boyfriend ordered a Monster Hunter fruits-of-the-sea mini-platter, the seafood arriving wrapped in a banana leaf. (It may or may not have been cooked by cats). Some of the options didn’t look very appetising or satisfying – although the Monster Hunter meat bone looked cool, I had been warned off by Danny but it was hilarious when the staff brought out a load of them, played the appropriate music and yelled the Japanese equivalent of, “So tasty!” There was a lot of choice but we struck a compromise on the last food item between fan favourite and filling, edible meal by ordering Athena Cykes’s ‘widget’ pizza – spinach, ham, tomato sauce and a soft boiled egg on top!

The next round of drinks was the T-Virus – complete with blue brain ice cube and a syringe full of dark purple liquid to squirt on it – and the Amaterasu which was my personal favourite! It was strawberry and soda in a salt-streaked glass resembling Ammy’s brush strokes topped with a sparkler for the goddess of the sun.

If you ordered certain things, the staff would perform a brief skit. For example, when we ordered the Phoenix and Franziska drinks, we got a brief scene of Franziska calling Phoenix out on being a foolish fool for having no real evidence. The highlight of the night though was the Ace Attorney onion rings (complete with potato croquette gavel). One poor/lucky soul who ordered the rings became the accused when the bar turned into a courtroom briefly, with appropriate music and everyone in the bar yelling “OBJECTION!”

We decided to get the best-looking dessert (although the Blue Badger pancakes and Trucy’s strawberry heart shortcake were equally tempting and not just because I wanted to order everything Ace Attorney) which was a Resident Evil brain cake. Sponge cake with cream and jam topped with chestnut paste and drizzled with raspberry sauce – a really surprisingly tasty combination of sweet, semi-savoury and sharp. The best part was being encouraged by the waitress to stab the cake with the provided knife and her yelling (so much enthusiastic yelling) “GOOD JOB!”

We ordered some merchandise via the provided catalogue and order form while enjoying our food and drinks, admiring the dishes that other people were ordering and attempting to translate the skits. At the end of the night there was a seat lottery and I won! That night’s prize was a Monster Hunter mini-notepad. When asked, I replied I was from London and had to endure some jokes about Harry Potter. Later though, the brief conversation I had with the waitress about Ace Attorney and the Blue Badger made up for it – as to be expected, all of the staff are big fans.

Merchandise in hand and a load of photographs later, the evening came to a spirited end. If you’re a fan and are in Tokyo, definitely drop by. From Shinjuku Station, take the exit for Kabukicho and it’s a short walk from there. Look for the main road with the Don Quixote (the logo is a happy penguin), keep it on your left and walk up, turning left at Mister Donuts. The building very helpfully has a bright yellow sign on the side of it.