Here cafe

Here café is a stylish café run by Junichi Yamaguchi, a first prize winner of the 2014 world latte art contest and an ex barista of Arabica that opened in July 2019 and is located on a 10 minute walk from Karasuma-Oike station or on a 15 minute walk from the famous Nijo-castle. It’s situated on the ground floor of Hotel Nagi Kyoto Sanjo and has a simple mortar exterior with glass sliding doors that are usually completely opened if the weather allows it. Due to the wide entrance and it’s spacious interior the café is wheelchair-friendly.

Similar to the exterior the entire interior consists mostly of mortar walls, flooring and a slick mortar counter with a brass edge on top. The shelfing, tables and chairs (that resemble the Maruni Hiroshima arm chair by Naoto Fukasawa) are all wood and along with the decorative dry plants give the café a more comfortable atmosphere. There is enough seating space for more than 30 people and some seats come with electrical outlets to charge your devices.

The cafe has a simple espresso based menu with ‘macchiato, americano and cafe latte (500 yen)’ . Besides coffee they also sell ‘elder flower juice, organic mint tea, blood orange juice, or chocolate’. Here also sells canelé, their main pastry which can be bought to eat in or take away and at times they also sell ice-cream or affogato. The canelés are here café original caneles. After the owner visited France and ate a delicious canele he was devout to recreate the canele in Japan. After many fails he finally succeeded to create the here cafe original “here only canelé”. The canelé are sold separately or in a box set of three that could also make for a nice gift.

Here cafe is a stylish cafe and a great place to relax with delicious coffee and canele.