Basho cafe: A gem in town

Thanks to my good friend Xin, I found a new gem in town. :) What's even better is that it's located pretty close to my work place!

Basho is a lovely cafe run by a Japanese family. It's a small shop sitting on East Hasting st, with around 4 table seats and 2 more window seats in total.

 The menu is very simple, which I think is good considering that it's a small cafe. Sometimes less means more ( in terms of food quality).

The cafe is a mixture of contemporary and retro setting. It gives me a homely feel, with a lot of D.I.Y decorations in place, and of course, a friendly obasan serving me in front of the counter. All these contribute to a cozy place to chill on a weekend.

The crowd was manageable when we went there. Although there were grab-and-go customers hassling in and out every couple of minutes, it did not create an intense feeling to the customers sitting in the cafe.

 The pastry is pretty unique too! It infuses the Japanese flavours into Western pastry.  We tried the Nut mochi, Kabocha muffin, Chocolate matcha cookie, Matcha white chocolate brownie, and Sesame brownie. Prices are quite reasonable, ranging from $0.5-2.00 per piece.

I guess the Japanese style pastry really suit my palate. Similar to Japanese pastry, they have lighter texture and sweetness. Except for the nut mochi, the others are not too sweet, just nice for my liking. Sizes are just nice for the 2 of us, not too big and we managed to try on various types.


I personally like the Matcha brownie a lot because the texture is light but every bite of it feels like I'm immersing myself in a Matcha sea.

We ordered the Matcha latte and it came in a huge cup. The latte is lightly scented with Matcha, it has more milky taste instead.

I really like this cafe a lot because it's not too crowded, providing the right atmosphere for chatting with a friend I've not seen in a while. The eats taste really good and reasonably priced, I would love to go back next time!

Short business hours would be the only disappointing part of this lovely cafe, as it runs from 9-4pm from Sat-Sun and 9-5pm from Wednesday and Thursday (Yes it's closed on Mon and Tues). Hopefully they would extend the hours in future so that I could grab some cookies home after work!

* Special thanks to Xin for most of the great pictures :) *