Ko-So Cafe

They have a various kinds of pasta menu and you can choose gluten-free spaghetti. Just 1 min walk from JR Ebisu station. Price is modest.

Love this place. Tons of options and everything is yummy and vegan. Well-priced and good atmosphere. Friendly service. I love everything from the pasta to the pizza to the buckwheat pancakes. The desserts can be hit or miss, but other than that it's all pretty great. Highly recommend.

Very surprised about this place! Stumbled upon it, ordered the pancakes and salad and was pleasantly surprised at how filling and delicious it was, pancakes moist and delicious, as well as how cheap it was to! I also got the dessert which was sweet potato mont blanc, very tasty as it wasn't to sweet but subtly so with a strong sweet potato taste. The pancakes were great, and I believed very well worth the price. The salad also came with three types of dressing, which was cool to test out and mix together which I liked best, as well as some crumbled "feta cheese" (It's all vegan!) that was very nice as well. Love this place! Without the dessert, the price would have been around 800 yen but with it as a set was around 1,000 which in my opinion is very worth it, especially considering the area in Tokyo. Would definitely come back again! It is very close to Ebisu station and definitely not that hard to find.

Great food, pasta dish was great. I asked for steamed veggies not on menu and they were happy to oblige. Well presented. Great little cosey but modern place. I travel extensivley across the world and this is a great recommendation. I had a great chocolate detox ice cream cake made from brown rice.

I tried the soy milk and mushroom pasta at Ko-So cafe and it was pretty average. Felt it was a little overpriced, but then again it is in Ebisu. Personally, there are other places I'd prefer to go where I could get portion sizes, tastier food for less money.

This place is really fantastic, I cant belive more people arent talking about this place. Very close to the Ko-so Cafe offers a cozy setting with very very friendly staff, their walnut pasta is to die for, so delicous! Great deserts and great smoothies. Why are you still reading this? Just go!

One of the best places in town, and I´ve been to many places in Tokyo!

They have a good choice of pastas (I love especially their spicy basil pastas with salad and coriander on the top!), the curry is good and they serve also some tasty rice and vegetables in bowls. I never take a chance to test their dessert, but they look yummy. Service is quite quick at lunch time. Considering that vegetarian/vegan restaurants are not so common in Tokyo, that's really a good place.

I came here with a group of people for lunch in Ebisu. I ordered the pasta with creamy mushroom sauce and my companion the pasta with pesto sauce. I imagine these might have been quite delicious if the sauce weren't effectively a soup, with the flavour diluted almost out of existence. The sauce was so thin it did not stick to the pasta and at the end of the meal we were left with a pool of liquid in the bottom of our bowls and nothing to do with it. As part of the lunch set I had ordered a vanilla vegan cheesecake, which seemed safest and it was indeed quite nice. I also got a chance to sample a couple of other desserts, including the soba crêpe cake, which was also delicious. However, another desert that some in the group ordered - made with bitter melon - was not so appealing, and one member of the group doubled over in disgust and spat it back on to his plate. Of course this dessert was not representative of the whole menu, but all-in-all this place provided a pretty mediocre lunch experience.

If I were to make a minor complaint about some veg cafes in Tokyo, it would be that many dishes are similar and not as unique or creative as in other cities with a more developed veg culture such as Taipei or San Francisco. In that respect, Ko-so Cafe truly is a treasure! The concept behind the restaurant is that they use their own, homemade ingredient called kōso (酵素 lit. "enzyme") as a base for nearly every sauce on the menu. Rich in umami (savoriness), kōso is made from a blend of 88 different ingredients that are then fermented and aged for 18 months.
I went on a weeknight and started with the nut pâté & olive paste salad for an appetizer. The veggies looked beautiful and it was topped with fresh alfalfa sprouts, nuts, and vegan cheese. The waitress then appeared with tiny pitchers of 3 different homemade dressings to try: celery, red pepper, and onion. Each 1 contained only kōso and vegetables and the flavor was excellent. The salad also came with 2 slides of brown focaccia bread with some kuromitsu (lit. 'black honey', vegan and made from unrefined Okinawan black sugar) for dipping. Not everyone will be a fan of the sweet dipping sauce as it's typically used for desserts but I enjoyed it. For my main, I ordered the soy milk ricotta cheese & basilico romagna pasta. It was excellent, full of flavor, and the noodles were done to al dente perfection. I also found the portions of my salad and pasta to be generous by Tokyo standards. Overall, I had a great experience at Ko-so Cafe and my only regret is that I didn't try it sooner. Highly recommended!