The Allpress Roastery & Café is located in the Kiyosumi Shirakawa neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan. According to their website,"The Tokyo Roastery & Café now stands as a carefully restored space that infuses a celebration of its past with an exciting nod to the future. These days, not only is our Tokyo spot a place for us to roast beautiful coffee for our wholesale customers, but it’s a welcoming spot for people to gather, connect and converse. The Allpress way. Floor to ceiling windows between the high ceilings of the roastery and café create a working industrial atmosphere so that each area feels part of the other and there is a strong sense of connectivity throughout. After enjoying a coffee in the Tokyo café, there is an open invite to all visitors to learn about what is going on behind the glass in our roastery. The space also doubles as a home for our technical, training and sales team. A hub of knowledge and activity that we’re proud to call ours."
One of the most important coffee markets in the world, Japan imports more than 930 million pounds of it each year — more than France, less than Italy. Japan is the third largest consumer of coffee in the world. There are coffee shops in Japan that date to at least the 1940s and traditions that reach back even further; it’s a culture that prizes brewed coffee over espressoand clarity over body. Pour over coffee originated in Japan, famous for the swan-neck kettles used to filter coffee. The narrow spout produces a thin, precise stream, and the handle brings your hand into a naturally balanced position — instead of flooding the filter and letting it drip, you deliver a measured amount of water over a period of several minutes.
The word for coffee in Japanese is kōhii (コーヒー), which comes from from the Dutch word koffie. The first coffee house in Japan, named Kahiichakan, was established by Nishimura Tsurukichi in 1888 with the idea of doing something for the younger generation by opening a coffeehouse, which would be a space to share knowledge, a social spot where ordinary people, students and youth could gather. During the 1920s kissatens began emerging. These spaces were more how we imagine cafes today, the kissaten was home to writers and artists, and scholars. Early Japanese coffee houses distinguished themselves from the tea houses by only offering Black tea and coffee as well as tobacco and newspapers.
