Junkissa Lierre: Waffles and Morning Sets in a Meiji Villa at Wakaura

Overview

Junkissa Lierre occupies a Meiji-era villa at Wakaura, the stretch of coast on the southern edge of Wakayama City that poets have been writing about since the Nara period and that was recognised in 2017 as a Japan Heritage site under the title ‘Wakanoura, a Treasury of Scenic Views’. The house belonged to Okazaki Kunsuke, a cousin of the Meiji statesman Mutsu Munemitsu and later Japan’s second Minister of Agriculture and Forestry; it is well over a century old, and its wide glass doors open straight onto a Japanese garden. A junkissa is a coffee house in the older sense — coffee, tea and something sweet, nothing stronger — and Lierre keeps that quiet register.

Most visitors come for the Brussels waffles, baked light and crisp, from 1,140 yen. Several are built on Wakayama produce: a sauce of Arida mandarins, a mitarashi glaze made with Yuasa soy sauce, and a lavish Uji matcha version finished with Wakaura senbei, the local biscuit. Morning sets are served from opening until 14:00, so they double as lunch — the kyu-masu bento, a nine-compartment tray in either Japanese or Western form (2,100 yen); a set built around chagayu, the tea-simmered rice gruel Wakayama is known for (1,840 yen); and a plainer morning at 1,650 yen. Coffee is 550 yen, and waffles can be taken away.

The cafe opens 10:00–16:00 and closes on Tuesdays, with twenty free parking spaces and reservations by phone or online. By car it is about twenty minutes from the Wakayama-minami Smart Interchange; otherwise take a Wakayama Bus from Nankai Wakayamashi Station, roughly forty minutes, and get off at Akebonobashi. Prices and the waffle line-up do change, so check the shop’s own site before setting out.