A coffee renaissance blooms in Hong Kong
“When I first came back from Vancouver I felt very alone,” recalls Nelvin Lee, a coffee aficionado who returned to Hong Kong from Vancouver in 2002. “Nobody understood why I loved coffee so much.”
Though he might sound a little dramatic, Lee’s painful memory of the coffee wasteland that once was is an accurate reflection of the despair coffee drinkers have traditionally endured in Hong Kong.
For years, coffee in Hong Kong was served as a sugary treat or alternative to lemon tea or lai cha (milk tea). It was typically made with stale beans and little care for presentation.
Over the past year, however, a new appreciation for coffee as culinary art has launched a “third wave” of coffee houses in Hong Kong. Less than a decade after Starbucks expanded here, a raft of independent coffee houses have followed in the titan’s wake. A growing population of knowledgeable coffee addicts has inspired locals like Lee to bring fresh beans, intriguing blends, expertly pulled espresso and artfully crafted lattes to the city.
“People are actually looking for quality now,” beams Lee, co-owner of Fresh Coffee, one of a handful of small coffee roasters in Hong Kong. “We started late but we’re catching up pretty quickly.”
Fresh Coffee’s website includes a discussion forum that’s home to a community of more than 700 enthusiastic coffee drinkers. Many also post on a forum run by catering entrepreneur Alvin Hui, who hosts coffee tastings and other gatherings.
Cafes such as Cafe Corridor in Causeway Bay, Crema Coffee in Tsim Sha Tsui East, Colour Brown in Sai Kung and Coco Espresso in Sheung Wan are a few favorites among the emerging coffee cognoscenti. But they represent only a fraction of the hundreds of otherwise mediocre coffee shops across a city where many customers are looking for a good-value lunch set rather than an outstanding cup of coffee.
For true believers, however, passion will always trump practicality.
EL Au, a 26-year-old assistant manager at Cafe Zambra who has devoted most of his adult life to a coffee obsession, believes that the boiling local interest in the roasted bean will lead to a new and even better crop of cafes.
“People come in and ask about latte art or different types of coffee because they saw it on TV,” Au says. “There’s been a change. From this year on, people are really interested in good coffee.”
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