Renowned luxury houses are connecting with their customers via designer cafes that are as aesthetic as their boutiques. Chancing upon Café Dior in Osaka, we stopped by to see if it lives up to the hype.
Over the past few years, luxury fashion brands have been exploring ways to engage with customers within the same sphere. Add to the mix the rising prices of luxury goods, often pushing them past accessibility for the average shopper.
Enter the café. Fashion houses like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, and Dior have ventured into creating these sophisticated designer spaces offering a curated dining experience. Nestled in the departure area of the Kansai International Airport in Osaka is Café Dior. At first glance, it is every bit as chic as the brand whose name it carries, beckoning you to come in for a spot of tea.
Café Dior opened its Osaka location toward the end of 2023, collaborating with 10 Michelin-starred chef Anne Sophie-Pic. As you peruse the café’s menu, she has this message for the guests: “I invite you to an epicurean and haute-couture journey where two universes with common sensitivities (elegance, savoir-faire, and pursuit of excellence) meet. Shapes, patterns, and textures, sourced from the world of Christian Dior, the couturier of the feminine ideal, have inspired my own imagination.”
Offered up are some of the most Instagrammable desserts that will have you pulling out your phone for more than a few snaps. Inspired by the Christian Dior archives, each one is adorned with the brand’s iconic design elements like Toile de Jouy, the Rose De Vents emblem, and the Dior’s trademark cannage pattern. In fact, they just might be too pretty to eat, with the fanciest names to match, such as La Lunette 8 (a sablé biscuit with a coffee raspberry marmalade and orange blossom), and La Brioche Bouton (a passion berry brioche with mango and passion fruit confit).
In an interview, Pic speaks of how Christian Dior’s understanding of the “feminine ideal” appeals to her as a female chef, saying “He sublimates women through the curved lines of his unique creations…this sensibility moves me and I am proud to celebrate French elegance and savoir-faire through this alliance.”
The first thing you notice as you walk in is the café’s well-appointed interiors, with a bar on one side, and tables on the other. A bookshelf features coffee table books documenting the designer’s illustrious career lines the inner wall, giving the space that sense of being in an atelier. Which is quite apropos, given that you get a glimpse of the Dior boutique, with shelves adorned with the fashion house’s most-coveted pieces—just in case you’d be enticed to walk over for a bit of shopping after you’ve had your tea. The wall surrounding the bar is covered in a collage of photos from what seems to be the Dior archives, rendered all in blue. A display shelf just below it features all the delightful desserts that they serve, ready to be fully admired. Literal eye candy, so to speak!
As the waiter leads you to your table, you already know you are in for one delightfully fancy afternoon. The cloth napkins have a sleeve with Dior’s trademark “CD” logo, and even the wet wipes have the Café Dior label. As you order, he cheerfully shows you what each of the cakes look like on a tablet, which makes you wonder if you’re ordering for what it could taste like of based on how it looks.
As tempting as everything was, it was the Le Lady, a Madagascar chocolate mousse infused with Earl Grey, which was in the shape of an apple embossed with Dior’s classic cannage, and the Le Gâteau Haute Couture, a Tahiti & Madagascar vanilla with yuzu-infused batak berry cake, that made it to the table. The cake had a pretty sculptured top, if you can use that to describe cake, and a white chocolate button. Both desserts were decadent—the former with a deep chocolate flavor offset by the Earl Grey Crème Anglaise, while the latter had a tart citrusy bite from the glaze. It went well with the pot of Bonne Étoile, a fragrant lemongrass and verbena based tea blend served in a porcelain Dior Maison tea set, as it should.
Keeping it real, having tea and cake at the Dior Café does ring in on the pricier side—though for some items it’s not too far off from dining in the Lobby Café at The Peninsula Manila, or even a fancy restaurant.
Perhaps what does set it apart, as with the other cafes inspired by these fashion houses, is the “immersive experience,” as they like to call it. It really is all marketing of the aspirational kind, so consumers get to connect with the brand in what is possibly the most accessible way they can imagine.
Who wants to spend thousands on a tiny key fob, right? That said, I’m still classifying this an occasional treat because we can’t be spending that much money on tea and a slice of cake. Also, if you do spot a Café Dior, and the like on your travels, it still is worth a visit.
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The next time you find yourself in Japan, Café Dior certainly deserves a place on your itinerary. After all, it is the perfect foil to a day of luxurious shopping in and around Tokyo’s ever trés chic Ginza. Or it could also be the sweetest way to end your Osaka sojourn on a very fancy note. Just be sure to get to the Kansai airport with time enough to spare before hopping on your flight. Trust us, you’d be warranted to luxuriate in this experience. Because why not, right?
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