SAPPORO, Aug 19 — Sometimes coffee isn’t really about the coffee.
Sure the quality and provenance of the beans matter, especially when “single origin” has entered common usage nowadays. It can be startling to overhear an 11-year-old in a café asking the barista where their coffee beans are from, and what sort of processing they use. Oh how things change!
In Hokkaido, the northernmost Japanese island famous for their dairy cattle, the source of a coffee bean takes a back seat to where the milk comes from. At Sapporo’s Baristart Coffee, a stone’s throw away from Odori Park, everyone orders a caffè latte even though espresso and pour-over coffee are on the menu too.
The reason becomes clear when you realise you can choose from three different types of fresh milk from all over Hokkaido to be incorporated in your coffee. Owner Yuki Takeuchi had traversed the island for his favourites, all unique in flavour but similar in that they have a high fat content to ensure perfect foaming.
The shop itself is compact, with a large mural of their bear mascot inside and a takeaway counter outside. Blonde woods dominate. You feel as though you’ve stumbled upon an Alpine lodge in the heart of the city. A home for hipsters.
While the beans come from And Coffee Roasters in Kumamoto, the milk is the draw here. Choose from sweet Jersey milk from Tokachi Kato Ranch in Obihiro City; another Jersey milk, albeit a stronger tasting one, from Farms Chiyoda in Biei-Cho; and a balanced Holstein milk from Hakodate Gyunyu in Hakodate City.
Sometimes Baristart offers seasonally limited milk. Part of the fun is in making conversation, asking the baristas for their recommendation. You’d be told that a sweeter milk will go well with an acidic coffee blend; a darker roast of beans would require a creamier milk. Delight in discovering just what you like best.
Two hours drive away in Asahikawa, a different sort of café culture reigns supreme. The second-largest city in Hokkaido, after Sapporo, Asahikawa is more known for its rustic style of ramen and the Asahiyama Zoo. Look closer and you will find that the traditional kissaten (or “tea drinking shop”) scene is well and thriving.
Though a kissaten is formally a tearoom that serves sweets, most shops are known for their coffee. These are deep, dark brews, often made with dark roast blends or the perennial Japanese favourite of Jamaica Blue Mountain. The trick is finding the right kissaten, one that’s more than simply convenience.
A brisk five-minute walk from the JR Asahikawa Station will bring you to a pre-war building that is almost 80 years old housing just that sort of kissaten. It’s rare to find structures still surviving from the Showa Era, which is part of the appeal of Café Tirol.
When you enter, you are immediately transported to another time. One that is warmer and cosier than the typical exposed concrete affairs contemporary coffee shops are these days. Jazz is playing and there is a lovingly curated menu of beans, all roasted in-house. Each brew is a drop of history seems to be the promise here.
Regulars come by before work for the moningusetto (breakfast set) that includes toast, a hard-boiled egg and devil-black coffee. Those in less of a rush — and why would you rush? — will appreciate their “Teppanyaki Fluffy Ricotta Pancake”, which is made to order.
Topped with fresh bananas, honey nut butter, freshly whipped cream and maple syrup, these pancakes are a trip back to a century before Instagram. This is meant to be savoured by your tastebuds, not your social media accounts.
Café Tirol (its name evoking visions of Alpine ski resorts, strangely apt given Asahikawa’s renown for some of the best snow in Japan) prides itself on using Hokkaido-made ingredients from the flour and eggs to the dairy such as milk and cheese. You taste the land. You taste a culture, the lives of a people.
Sometimes coffee isn’t about the coffee. Not when the old world ambience of the café, wood panels infused with smoke and quaint desserts several decades out of fashion, charms you beyond words. Not when you can taste the terroir of the milk in your caffè latte and imagine happy herds of Hokkaido cattle.
Sometimes coffee is just an excuse for everything else, that special kind of something that has no single origin.
Baristart Coffee
4-8 Minami 1-jo Nishi, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Open daily 9am-7pm
Tel: +81-11-215-1775
Café Tirol
8-Hidari-7, 3-jo-dori, Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan
Open Mon-Sat 8:30am-6pm; Sun closed
Tel: +81-166-26-7788
