Justin Lee, a barista at San Francisco’s The Coffee Movement, first sat for a coffee omakase — a tasting menu for coffee and snacks — at Simple Kaffa in Taipei. He fell in love with the high-caliber experience, and decided to bring it back to the Bay.
Omakase is a Japanese word that translates to “I leave it up to you,” and once referred to elaborate Japanese meals curated by the head chef. Nowadays, there's an ‘omakase’ for seemingly everything — including coffee tastings, which are popular throughout Asia, but rare in the United States. Blue Bottle founder James Freeman hosts omakase services in L.A., Kyoto, and Seoul under the brand Blue Bottle Studio, though they have yet to host any in the Bay, where the coffee chain was born.
Still, the trend seems poised for a breakthrough here. Last month, Lee and fellow coffee lover Circle Chan launched a pop-up version of the coffee service, called Little Plum. Another pop-up service, Komakase, also launched in July, out of Paper Son’s SoMa cafe. Unrelated to Lee and Chan, The Coffee Movement began hosting its own sit-down service this summer at its original Nob Hill outpost (though it doesn’t call it omakase, instead selling a $100 “Coffee Movement Experience”).
At Little Plum, the menu will depend on the season: For the debut services, which were held at a home in Daly City, guests were treated to four courses and a dessert, including a milk brew — a crowd-pleasing cold brew soaked in milk instead of water — and a nitrogen-charged ice coffee called the Sunny Hills. The team has more pop-ups planned for San Francisco in the near future.
At Komakase, meanwhile, the standard omakase includes two pour-over tastings, a coffee cocktail, and a heavier cream-based cocktail. Guests can also opt for the “roaster spotlight,” which includes four pour-overs and an espresso. Fruit pates and chocolate-covered ginger slices from local chocolatier Socola round out Komakase’s menu.
These experiences are not cheap: Tickets to the tastings at Little Plum cost $45, while Komakase’s four courses will run you $55, including a “palate cleanser” at the end, such as a to-go coffee cocktail. (Blue Bottle Studio’s service runs about $60, though it serves a whopping 10 courses.)
Komakase co-founder Kieran Eng hopes the service will be accessible, and let people experience coffee in a more precise way, even if they’re new to the world of tasting.
“I found inspiration in tasting coffee and calibrating it with other people,” Eng told me. “I don’t want it to feel exclusive anymore.”
Such multi-course savoring offers an antidote to the push in most American coffee shops to get your coffee and get out, and the trend of restaurants “turning into vending machines with chairs,” as New York Times food critic Pete Wells memorably called it in his essay on why he was quitting the business. They’re chances to reclaim the leisure of drinking coffee, to push back against the hurriedness of the daily grind.
“Coffee should not be drunk in a hurry,” as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote in 1982’s Memory for Forgetfulness. “It is the sister of time, and should be sipped slowly, slowly.”
