Café de Costa Rica in Suō-Ōshima
Do you remember desperately counting change for pizza and cigarettes as a teenager? No? Just me? Well that same frantic hopelessness washed over me when we stumbled across Café de Costa Rica. “Did you check the car?! Check the car!!!”
We returned our trays from a delightful Cambodian meal and the clock struck noon, marking the start of our 10 day lockdown. The smell of coffee began to permeate the salty Suō-Ōshima air and like insects to a flame, my husband Blake and I thoughtlessly gravitate toward the doors of a tiny café.
We step inside, bumping into each other, like the graceful Americans that we are, and begin to “ooh” and “ahh” over everything.
Owner and operator, Jun Fujimoto, who I’d later find to be a Coffee Quality Arabica Q Grader, welcomes us. He explains the different types of coffees available and then he says the magic word: Yirgacheffe.
Blake orders and realizing it’s cash only, I begin a frenzied search, diving into the depths of my wallet. One hundred, two hundred, two hundred fifty? “We don’t have enough,” I whisper to Blake. “We’ll have to come back,” we said, embarrassed, hoping to head off any progress he’d made on our order.
Focused intently on preparing a pour-over, Fujimoto-san calmly asks in Japanese, “How much do you have?” looking up briefly, his eyes smiling over his mask. I’m pumped for two reasons, one: that he’s cool like that and two: that I understood what he said. Japanese classes are working. I dump out my change, managing ¥300, and we thank him profusely, imagining all the ways we’ll pay him back next time.
Fujimoto-san continues his craft, heating the water and moving the from a hammered copper kettle to a cup and back again. He sprinkles the coffee into a filter that’s perched above a beaker of sorts. I notice the beaker is sitting on top of a small crocheted floral potholder and I decide in my imaginary narrative that his grandmother made it and giggle that our grandmothers are universal in such crafts.
I come to and the coffee is now in a paper cup with this crazy shaped lid. It’s tall on one side and shorter on the other, each with their respective holes. We’re instructed to drink from the tall end and I’m happy for it because I would have drank from the other. We thank him again and we go about our way.
For those of you who perhaps have little to no knowledge about Yirgacheffe, in the words of Inigo Montoya, “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
Black Powder Coffee says it best, “Entry to coffee geekdom starts with a cup of Yirgacheffe.” It’s true. Yirgacheffe is like the tea of coffee. It shares those same tanins and floral notes yet it also carries with it acidic and fruit characteristics like no other coffee in the world. Like wine, its flavors and aromas change with temperature, becoming more blueberry-like as it cools. In short, this ain’t the kind of coffee you add milk or sugar too, baby. It’s perfect the way it is.
Café de Costa Rica’s Yirgacheffe is exemplary. It’s expertly roasted allowing all of those beautiful intrinsic flavors to shine up and over the cardboardiness of the paper cup that sometimes finds its way into the coffee. I held the cup like a baby bird the entire way home, dreaming of all the ways I could make its decadence make sense to all of you…
Tips to know before you go:
Cash! Bring cash. Like, enough cash. Iced coffee is ~¥250 and pour overs are ~¥500.
There are no English menus.
Click the map below to plan your trip!
