Alright! Hi guys! It is time to share the first ever Specialty Coffee Shop from my hometown 'Gunma'!! I know none of you has never heard of the name and has no idea where I am talking about! Don't worry Im not even gonna get offended by that! It is evidently not the popular prefecture even you ask Japanese people about this place, some of them might not know the whereabouts. But geographically speaking, it is located just two prefectures above Tokyo toward he North! There is Tokyo, and Saitama ( which is another prefecture between Tokyo and Gunma) and then here we are my hometown 'Gunma'!! So it is actually not that remote to Tokyo!! It will only take you a couple hours by train!! It's bearable right?? Anyways that is a wrap of me explaining a bit of my hometown. Let's jump back into the main topic, so where i was born, I was already aware there wasn't much specialty coffee culture developed. In a place like Brighton where I use to live before, the number of coffee shops was hugely different! People here are still stuck with Starbucks or big chain which is fine and I am hoping this appreciation of specialty grade coffee will be prevailed soon!! However, there is this one little local coffee shop that is in Maebashi!. It is a city and I live in this town since baby, It is called ' 13 Coffee Roasters'!! I noticed this place when I was still in Brighton, I was searching some good coffee shops back in my hometown, so once I get back, I still enjoy high quality coffee that meets my standard!! haha Then I checked this place on Google Map and I was like ' Yes!! ' coz it is actually not too far from our house!! So one day I came down here to check their coffee!! Look at the first pic! That is the coffee shop look from outside! It looks really cool!! It is all white based painted all around the wall. And it is hard to see, but this shop is really tiny, you could almost say it is a bigger version of coffee stand. In fact, there is one counter table with a couple of seatings and a long chair outside, that is all! Nice and small scale which I quite like about. As soon as you stepped in, what you see in front of you is the selections of several single origins, their house blends named after the some famous mountains we have in Gunma, Akagi, Haruna, Myogi. I this it is a cool idea to take the name from those aspect!! They offer each one of the coffee brewed with french press for tester! You get to try whichever the one you fancy that you would like to give a taste. Also those beans are freshly roasted on-site as you can see in the picture and the name of the shop! In this small scale shop, it also roasts coffee within the site which is crazy! it has got small scale roaster, so it doesn't produce large batch size but seems to be big enough!!! At the back of the shop, there is a storage room where the green beans are kept at the ideal temperature just like a wine seller so that the beans are in the goof condition to be roasted each time!! The staffs seem to be really passionated with what they do and it is great for me as I can ask questions if I have. Surprising enough of me though, I haven't stayed there to drink a coffee yet! One, it is small and interactive and all, but sometimes you just wanna chill out. haha ! I will have a go one day! But I did buy a single origin coffee from there and brewed it at home with V60 it was quite good coffee! I haven't got to try many coffees since I am back in Japan, but id say this is one of the best one I tried! And I am glad that there is a decent coffee shop nearby and also does professional roasting!!! It's not really a place where I can highly recommend coz its quite far unless you start living in Gunma, but it might still be worth coming to Gunma I can show you around maybe!! lol Right, that is all for this ! I hope to put something up soon again ! Cheers!! Y
0 コメント
Well, well well, I am back here again share another good coffee shop I visited the other day. It was a different time to the last post when I was in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, I went to this one last weekend when I also had a chance to visit Tokyo I had loads of hours to kill before seeing my friends from the UK. So I jumped on the train to tokyo and after a few hours of journey, I got to this area called, 'Kiyosumi Shirakawa'. It was alright journey but bit of complicated train, tubes. It was super confusing as I haven't used it for ages, but managed to make it to the nearest station. I was gonna chill out at the blue bottle coffee in the same are before this, but it was temporarily closed for new look! I had to come to this shop straight which is fine after all since I wanted to come here so bad. It is called ' All Press Espresso' in Tokyo. I have been planning to visit this place, so I am so glad I finally had a chance!! When I was in Brighton, I had a day out to London for coffee trip quite a while ago, there was allpress in London as well, but I didn't get to go! That also means this coffee shop doesn't only exist in Japan, it was founded in New Zealand which I am so interested to go to find coffee scenes. Since then, it got really successful until today, ended up stepping into Tokyo, London and some other countries, too!! The success they made is really impressive!! I saw the story of how they found this location on the website, it says it took them over 2 years just to find the right location for the business before cracking on with anything!! I could obviously see that as soon as I had it in my eyes, this place couldn't be any more right!! Literally the perfect spot for what they try to offer. It is located in sort of a resident area and this wooden warehouse looking building all of sudden pops out!! It is an absolutely beautiful outside look of the shop!! Once you stepped into the shop, it was an amazing atmosphere, friendly environment. The wooden base wall makes the whole place really warm and welcoming. Coffee retail is one the left side of the stop on the way to the roaster. It is a roastery as well, so they told me if I remember right, roast every Tuesday and Friday! I was so intrigued by the roaster they have. It looks so gorgeous!!!! For the work station, it separates espresso bar and till area where they prepare food for customers as well!! Well-organised, clean coffee area. Espresso machine ; La Marzocco Linea PB 2 groups Grinder ; Victoria Arduino Mythos I obviously ordered a flat white just standard typical coffee choice. Well, the flat white was a classic taste, I would say light chocolate and nutty notes with a balanced acidity there and smooth mouthfeel! I felt like paid more money that I would do if i order the same coffee in London, but clearly the price in Tokyo must be more expensive then! haha But it was really worth it and I wanted to have another one but I saved it for another coffee shop! Anyways, it means I will introduce a new one to you all in the next post! so Please keep your eyes on it!! Cheers!! Y Hi everyone!! I am back here again writing this from home in Japan! It has been already few weeks gone since I came back! It is insane how time quickly flies!! I have been really relaxed and chilled enjoying my time with no job! It sounds like I am such a lazy man maybe I am just for now! haha I have plenty of time to organise this post so I am putting one up today!! Its part of another blog connected to the last one where I was in Tokyo for a day! I was around Shinjuku area for those who are not familiar with the specific place, it is basically the central of Tokyo and like a maze!! haha Well described yeah?? I remembered there is this coffee shop that I was curious to try, so I searched on Google and found out the location, headed there!! That is 'Blue Bottle Coffee'!! ![]() ここをクリックすると、編集できます。 This Brand is really famous and international, well-known across the world, having brunches in many countries for coffee lovers. In fact, there are several of them already established even in Japan. People seem to be appreciating the specialty coffee scene more than before. It has really simple and minimised logo but yet quite appealing in logo design of what they want to sell. I would definitely say this brand has created the first huge modern Specialty coffee shop trend. As soon as I got in, it was obvious that busy with customers and people are curious about what they are doing at the coffee bar. My first impression was this space is well-designed and so tidy and organised for staffs. Using classic, La marzocco Classic 3 group heads Major Mazzer Grinder It was quite hot and humid on that day, I wanted something chilled for my first coffee, I went for a cold brew!! They had all the espresso coffees and pourer as well!! I wanted to test their cold brew, so I chose the one! It came in a beautiful glass and the taste was just amazing!! really sweet and super smooth mouth-feel. I am so curious about the recipe for this cold brew but I'm sure they won't tell me,!! lol I enjoyed the coffee a lot, nice atmosphere, staffs are all friendly and welcoming. It was also attracting a large number of customers from other countries!! Whilst I was writing one, I had a chance to check out another outlet of this brand, but unfortunately, it was under refutnishment, so I couldn't get it! haha Twist of fate or I should have kept my eyes on it! Anyhow, it is getting bigger and bigger and more branches will be open in my opinion, it tells the popularity of this coffee. 100% recommended. There will still be another tokyo coffee shop I would like to share with. So Stay tuned!! Cheers!! Y Hi all! My hometown is getting cool down and going towards the end of summer which I am happy about as i want avoid Japanese extremely hot and humid summer! So I am glad it's going away for now although it'll be back next year!! haha So, I was in Tokyo for a day the other day, and making the most of the time there to visit as many specialty coffee shops as possible. For my second choice, I picked up the one called 'chop coffee' in Harajuku. As me and my friend were wandering and having a walk from Shibuya to Omotesando, it was a nice stroll and realised on the way there that there is a coffee shop I was interested to visit, so I quickly checked it on Google Map and resumed the walk to get to this place. It was off the main road where full of people and packed whereas, this little shop was on a little cute street and much quieter!! The shop is quite small as Tokyo is packed and not much space for a spacious place. The shop is really organised and operated great in a limited space! Apparently there is another shop of this closely where roasting takes place. So this one is more like an espresso bar and lots of take aways as there is a lot to see and check out on the same street! It also attracts loads of tourists as well as locals, english friendly coffee shop. One thing I particularly liked about this place is they already use Huskee cups for drink in instead of glass mugs I though it was environmentally friendly and good way to promoting sustainable coffee cup!! Espresso Machine ; La marzocco Linea PB Grinder ; Mahlkonig EK-43 I went for a flat white in this shop as well! It seems like they made the flat white in 12 oz cup, so it tasted quite milk for me, but really silky smooth, nicely textured milk it did have a flat white milk!! Espresso was also really balanced flavour!! Next time, I would like to visit the roastery shop where sell loads of retails and bigger environment. More coffee passionate guys!! There we go guys!! This is the wrap for this post! I went to a couple of more shops next day! There will be posts about those due to be up soon!! Cheers!! Y Hi all!! I am back here again to post another coffee shop article!! As I mentioned before on my last post, I am back in Japan (hopefully let's say 'temporarily' )! For the time being, I will take advantage of this time to travel and catch up with friends. But quite importantly, I should check out some nice coffee shops in Japan as well!! Since I have grown up my passion with coffee more whilst I was away in the UK (sometimes, some other countries ), I am highly curious what Japanese coffee scenes are like in here. I haven been looking into lots of places even when I was still in Brighton. I am genuinely surprised how many specialty coffee shops are in here particularly just in Tokyo. Anyways, as I have a plan to go to Tokyo for friend's reunion thing, I might as well taste some coffee there. I am actually not from Tokyo and my hometown is called Gunma. I got to Shibuya to meet up with my mate, but before that happened I had an hour of free time, so I checked on google map and found this place. It is called 'Fuglen' ! Check out that entrance!! How gorgeous does that look?! It is actually my very first specialty coffee shop visit in Tokyo, I felt like I am one of the coffee tourist in a way!! I was like, oh my god this looks really attractive! The house is looking a Japanese old traditional style and as if this is just one of the someone's private house or something. I don't have many pictures of inside the shop unfortunately as it was quite busy and felt a bit bad to capture other customers. However you can kind of see as soon as you walk into the shop, there is a full of vintage furniture and an amazing collections of those. The bar is so simply organized and tidy considering the fact they sell variety of alcohols, too!! The staffs are super friendly and seemed to handle English as well. Of course I used Japanese by the way!.lol Espresso machine ; LA Marzocco Strada Grinder ; Major Mazzer Now, who wants to know what I had? Classic flat white!! It was 550 yen which is around £4, so I guess it seems to be expensive and understandable price. I was sat outside, coz it was really nice and chilled quite busy and a bit loud inside. I can't really tell why I was so nervous when I first had a sip of this coffee, I felt weird drinking specialty coffee in Tokyo after I did for 2 years in Brighton, But anyway, coffee is coffee so I was like just do it and see how I feel. OMG. It was really tasty!!!! What a great flat white!! really silky smooth milk and great espresso. Latte art is also quite decent!! I felt like this is what I needed and It made up for my coffee loss from Brighton!! I was quite happy that I found this shop as my first one and made me discover more of these nice ones!! Apparently, there is another shop in Tokyo, so whenever you have chance, I would highly recommend to visit either one! They offer amazing coffees and also people are great and interior they use is fantastic too!!! Anyway, I went to a different shop after this, so that one will be up on here soon! Cheers!! Y |
アーカイブズ
10月 2019
カテゴリ |