Like a true New Yorker, Kate Kaneko has an unconventional roommate situation. It’s
Kaneko’s coffee shop and matcha bar, Asano, that’s on the buzzer but not on the lease.
Since June, Asano has been the daytime tenant at Sandro’s, a beloved Italian spot on the Upper East Side that opened in 2007. Every Monday through Friday from 7:30am to 2:30pm, Asano’s cheerful poppy red noren hangs across the door of Sandro’s, announcing to the neighborhood that the restaurant is now a Japanese-accented café with cortados, cold brew, matcha lattes, and freshly baked pastries like a miso caramel morning bun, a black sesame coconut croissant, or a slice of matcha loaf.
Asano is the kind of elegant, curated coffee shop and matcha bar that every neighborhood deserves. You deserve to be within walking distance of the Asano latte, a house specialty made with espresso, miso, coconut, and your choice of milk—it’s subtle, a nutty, and comforting drink with a gentle sweetness.
And Kaneko’s unusual deal with Sandro’s allows her to operate the café in a
part of town where a lease might otherwise be out of reach. The finances of coffee shops are notoriously difficult to make work, especially with the skyline-high
rents of New York City, and many owners struggle to run a business that’s usually active for just the first part of the day.
But rather than add a longer food menu and try to do too many things at once, Asano can be laser-focused on serving coffee, matcha, and pastries. “I flipped the script,” Kaneko said while sitting at a table on a recent morning. All she needed to do was find a restaurant that didn’t serve lunch during the week—and that trusted her enough to give her the keys. Also, it needed to look good during daylight hours. “When I spoke to restaurateurs, a lot of them didn’t believe that the space had the right chi for a daytime concept,” she said.
Enter Sandro’s, where the dining room is simple and comfortable: white-painted brick walls, Thonet-style chairs. It’s a place where you can get a quick coffee at the bar, or grab a sidewalk table outside, or sit and linger in the back. “This is an expression of the restaurateur and their style. I’m not looking to change that, more
just respect it and amplify it.”
Raised in New Jersey, Kaneko has a background in hospitality, and worked with Mercato Metropolitano food halls in London and Hawksmoor steakhouse in Midtown. But she is also a graduate of Harvard Business School, and rather than pay rent, she struck a revenue-sharing agreement with Sandro’s that so far is a win-win. “ The better we do, the better they do,” she said.
And the better Asano does, the more likely Kaneko will be able to add another location, then another. Someday soon, you might see a restaurant in your neighborhood with the Asano noren hanging across the door—you deserve it.
ASANO CAFE
322 East 86th St, New York, NY; @asano.nyc
