The Other Critics

Hirsch Ventures to S.F.’s Only Anime Maid Café, Akiba

Photo: Gil Riego Jr./Examiner

This week Jesse Hirsch pays a visit to Akiba (3141 Clement Street), the newish, anime-themed dessert bar in the Richmond which we mentioned a couple months back, and which specializes in a trendy Hong Kong-style dessert called the honey toast box. Hirsch acknowledges that while the bread-boxed sundaes are comforting a fun, the real draw to the place are the waitresses dressed as anime maids — noting that this is really a dialed-back version of a maid cafe, popular now in Tokyo, in which servile waitresses blow on people’s food for them and call male diners “master.” Innocently kinky, right?! Anyway, Akiba isn’t quite like that, and there are a lot of kids who show up dressed as anime characters themselves (it’s called cosplay, FYI), and it’s all so vanilla that they even sell some non-alcoholic “beer taste” beverage called Fine Free. Weird. [Examiner]

Hirsch Ventures to S.F.’s Only Anime Maid Café, Akiba