Most of the coffee here in Taiwan is pretty bad for the very reasons that have been touched on: technique and beans. The Taiwanese have been heavily influenced by the Japanese, so most of the brew in restaurants is harsh and bitter from a vac pot. A few years ago, Italian coffee caught on in a big way and, as so often happens in these cases, the inevitable price competition took over, with quality deemed unnecessary. Margins were squeezed so thin that a lot of the shops didn't survive. The big players are Starbucks, 85°C, and Barista Coffee, the latter two being Taiwanese chains. I like Starbucks the best of those three, but the ubiquitous 85°C is nice to have in a pinch. Coffee here is mainly about hammering out a lot of cups in a short time.

There are some shops making some very good coffee, but these are very few. Mojo Coffee here in Taichung, my local roaster and coffee haunt, received a visit from Stephen Morrissey, so Scott must be doing something right.

I wonder if there're similar threads on Japanese Ramen boards

... on Japanese Ramen boards.

Do such things exist? If so, it would be a very appropriate example, as Japanese ramen and American espresso both came from other countries...

And to continue the comparison, no, I've never heard of 'la mian geeks' in China

Regards, Henry

I remember a very cute movie about some Japanese ramen fanatics and the incompetent new owner of an inherited noodle shop. So I was guessing there would be ramen boards.

In the early 80's I was in Korea while serving in the Navy. We met a some college students and ended up in a bar/coffee house. After a heated exchange between our new friends and the waiter we were finally brought mugs of fairly good strong coffee. The problem was it was outside of 'coffee hours', and the waiter wasn't going to serve us, until it was explained to him that we got cranky without our coffee.

just returned to Beijing from 10 days in Laos -- Vientiane and Luang Prabang -- and am happy to report that decent espresso drinks are not too hard to find in either place, tho i am betting that venturing outside these "major cities" would be risking a bout of espresso deprivation. i will admit to having failed the group in not capturing the story in photos but i did at least note the gear in use and more importantly, shop/cafe names....

in both Vientiane (a sprawling metropolis of a few hundred thousand) and Luang Prabang (gotta love the name of this city, no?) the majority of machines and grinders i saw were Conti (hard to id the exact model and they may have been Xeos or from Conti's "essika" line?) and Nuova Simonelli (2 group machines, maybe aurelia?). At the airport in LP, saw a Rocky doserless paired up with a Gaggia classic.

awards for best drinks, based only on flavor and on consistency - I drank mostly macchiatos and wife had same or cappuccino - go to 2 different places:

first, Joma cafe in Vientiane and in LP (http://www.joma.biz). their drinks were consistently good and baristas clearly well-trained -- hard to get your head around folks in a country as poor and underdeveloped as Laos not only making good drinks but also conversant with all the english/italian espresso terminology. have to say that i felt bad for the baristas for having to wear really silly hats as part of their otherwise normal t-shirt and jeans uniform, not sure what management was thinking....would be a morale-buster for me but then again, i am an overfed, overeducated american, so what do i know?

on par with Joma in Vientiane -- and without the soul-destroying floppy, brown hats -- was the effort by folks at the Phimphone market. espresso was so good here in fact, that i was happy to suck down multiple straight espresso, no need for the sin-hiding foam or splash of milk.

second place goes to Saffron cafe in Luang Prabang (http://www.saffroncoffee.com/). they do a good job with all their drinks but what pulls them down to second place is consistency. out of four drinks, two would be excellent, one acceptable, and one undrinkable. all in all tho, hard to argue with the experience of a breakfast macchiato on a terrace overlooking the Mekong river....

espresso drinks elsewhere ranged from ok to outrageously bad. luckily, both LP and Vientiane are small enough that we were never too far from our two top contenders.

Laos is a major producer of coffee these days but i have to say that i was unimpressed, over all, by the quality of the coffee on the few occasions that drank straight coffee (vs espresso). maybe this was a matter of technique, too? or is there something about Laotian coffee?

snaab wrote: or is there something about Laotian coffee?

Heavy asparagus flavor. IMO, interesting in the cup; too far out for espresso.

another_jim wrote:I remember a very cute movie about some Japanese ramen fanatics and the incompetent new owner of an inherited noodle shop.

Tampopo. Very cute indeed.

I used to live in China (Changchun - way up north) and have traveled all over there. I have also traveled or spent time in Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macau. My experiences with coffee are that it's a mixed bag leaning heavily towards the blah side but with some hidden gems in some places. In Seoul this past November and December I was lucky enough to stumble upon a Cafe Artigiano location. I had heard about this place before and it was very good and surpassed what I'd heard. They had bags of freshly roasted CoE in the window and the shots and milk were all great (despite a botched attempt at art)

When I was in Hong Kong the summer before last it was just a brief few days vacation from my work in Macau and unfortunately I didn't get to visit Cafe Crema. I would really like to next time I'm in the neighborhood. Macau was overall pretty bad and after the first week I decided to just go to Starbuck's when I wanted an espresso based drink. Needless to say, I didn't drink too many espresso-based drinks while I was there. I had a hand grinder and my own roasted beans for the first two weeks. I bought some beans from a local place after that. They were OK but not freshly-roasted.

When I was in China I went to some places that actually had pretty decent drip and vac-pots but couldn't seem to get the espresso right. One of the places was owned by an American and he seemed pretty serious about cupping and whatnot and that showed in his drip but his baristas were just not very well trained. At that time neither was I so I didn't offer to help. The place was called "Michael's" and I enjoyed many a day there drinking drip and eating homemade chocolate chip cookies.

The interesting thing about Korea, Macau and Hong Kong is that there are SO MANY freaking coffee shops there. Especially in Korea. It would take forever + a lot of bad coffee I think to try out a lot of the shops in Seoul to find a good one so I think it's best to stick with existing recommendations such as Cafe Artigiano plus a couple of others that can be found on coffeegeek or maybe in some past threads here.

brad

djmonkeyhater wrote:Well just got back.

Couple things of note:

The green monster has a couple of those La Marzocco's left in Taiwan. This is from Taichung City, on the Harbor Road in a large department store called SOGO. I apologize in advance for some marginal camera photos.

<image>

This could be a good sign. At least they look good on the counter.

<image>

Look a green apron and a tamper!!! Who would have thought it could happen?

<image>

I just went there today. They still have the same machine and grinders, although I think their floor space has been reduced a great deal since the last time I was there (several years ago, actually). I've never seen tamping like that before. It was sort of like loading a muzzleloader.