A note on the shop: the milk comes from a farm in Biei, Hokkaido, where the cattle are on pasture all year. They churn the butter in the shop each morning, which is the point of the place — everything else is built around it.
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BUTTER Biei Hoboku Rakunojo on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Ice cream lovers, thank you for waiting. It is Hangover Meshi time.
Today I went to eat ice cream under Tokyo Station. It opened in spring 2023, on the first basement floor of the Marunouchi Building. Using milk from four breeds of cattle kept on pasture all year round in Biei, Hokkaido, they churn fresh butter in the shop every day and use it in the ice creams and cakes.
Apparently making and selling butter inside the shop itself is a world first. Looking forward to this.
One group ahead of me on arrival. Three in the afternoon on a weekday, and it is that popular.
A short wait and in.
What to have, then. Looking through the menu I found something excellent: soft-serve made from nothing but raw milk and beet sugar. That alone might be a little sweet, so a coffee as well.
First they bring you buttermilk.
It is what comes out of the butter-making process, apparently. It has an acidity to it and tastes clean.
And here is the soft-serve. Quite a quantity of it.
It felt a size larger than soft-serve on an ordinary cone.
The ingredients are the Biei pasture farm’s raw milk and beet sugar, and nothing else. No emulsifiers, no stabilisers — a thing built to stand the flavour of pastured milk straight up, served with a house-made almond tuile. Right, let us eat. The first thing that reaches you as the spoon goes in is not the smell of sugar but the smell of milk itself. The first mouthful is lighter than expected and simply slips apart on the tongue.
And then the depth of the raw milk takes over your whole mouth. The sweetness is restrained, though — it is closer to the sweetness of the milk itself coming forward rather than sugar. Rich, and yet the finish is unexpectedly light, so you can keep eating to the end without tiring of it. This may be the best thing on the menu for finding out what pastured milk actually tastes like.
The hot coffee alongside is a perfect match.
And this is the crémet d’Anjou my friend ordered.
The summer sauce is mango and passion fruit.
A dessert leaning towards a rare cheesecake, made with the farm’s fresh cheese, fromage blanc. It comes originally from Anjou in France — drained cheese, lightly built. I had a mouthful: the spoon sinks in with almost no resistance, and the moment it reaches your mouth it melts away.
The flavour is perhaps best described as the lactic acidity of yoghurt with a sweetness closer to cheesecake. When the acidity of the tropical fruit arrives, the sweetness of the milk comes chasing along behind it.
This is very good.
So — I went to the much-talked-about BUTTER. When you think about it, being able to eat desserts made with fresh milk from a pasture farm in Biei, Hokkaido, right in the middle of Tokyo, is quite something. Because this is a shop that can make its own fromage blanc from its own raw milk, the fragrance of the milk survives honestly, and that is what makes it good. It is enormously popular, but do drop in.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
BUTTER Biei Hoboku Rakunojo (Marunouchi) — menu
BUTTER (the butter dishes)
The headline group. Everything built around Biei wheat and the butter churned in the shop each morning.
Three pancakes plus a 100g block of butter. Biei-wheat pancakes cooked on a copper plate, with a whole freshly made block of butter alongside. Butter you do not finish can be taken home in a cool bag.
One slice of five-cut bread, 50g couture butter and granulated sugar. The bread is from Centre The Bakery. They will toast it on request.
Two scones, house butter cream and house fruit sauce. Take the first bite with nothing on it, for the fragrance of the Biei wheat.
SWEETS
Biei pasture-farm raw milk and beet sugar only. Served with a house-made almond tuile.
A proper custard pudding of fresh milk and eggs. A generous 9cm across.
A light-textured rare cheesecake made with the fresh cheese fromage blanc. In summer, mango and passion fruit sauce.
A chiffon cake using no vegetable fat at all, made with the “butter you eat as milk” and buttermilk. Eaten with cream whipped to order at the table machine. One refill of cream. Can also be added to the pancakes, pudding or coffee.
DRINK
Built around drinks made with the farm’s low-temperature-pasteurised milk.
The house low-temperature-pasteurised milk. One refill on the hot.
Hot chocolate made with chocolate from the old French house Bonnat.
An extremely luxurious matcha latte using Ippodo Chaho’s top-grade matcha.
Mariage Frères tea with plenty of milk. Hot in a pot, iced in a glass.
The nostalgic taste of egg and milk, blended with the soft-serve.
A rich drinking yoghurt made from the farm’s raw milk.
Iced coffee topped with the house soft-serve.
Using Mariage Frères’ Earl Grey French Blue.
The hot café au lait, chocolat chaud, matcha latte and thé au lait come in two jugs, so you can adjust the strength of the milk to taste.
topping
House red-bean paste, cooked in the shop from Biei shumari azuki beans. Can be added to the food.
* One order per person. At busy times they may limit how long you can keep a seat.
* From the in-shop menu at my visit in July 2026. Prices include tax; the line-up changes with the seasons. Please check the latest on the official site or at the shop.
BUTTER Biei Hoboku Rakunojo (cafe / Nijubashimae Station, Tokyo Station, Yurakucho Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.7
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
