Unar Coffee Company  

It was a relaxing afternoon visit to Dai Hang (大坑) with my friend whose also a coffee addict. With no particular expectation for Unar, we arrived the area, circling around until we finally spotted the coffee shop.

Posted on May 28, 2011... 3AM

Daytime at Unar Coffee Company
May 14, 2011 around 4PM

This was the last day of HOFEX and when the final round of HK GBC 2011 took place. It was my first choice for coffee in Tai Hang on that day, think that Unar's staff won't go to HOFEX. So, they seemed to be serious about coffee even closing the shop from 3PM to 6PM on that day just to attend the event... Interesting!!! May 27, 2011, 9PM
I finally made my way to this much talked about cafe. The place was quite full even at this time for this kind of drink and the atmosphere was quite lively, very nice indeed. I thought the only places to sit was outside the shop on the walkway as in the picture. Turn out, there's a little bar inside the shop which is quite cozy and nice with warm lighting. It made the cafe feel clean and everything looked very pleasing I wanted to try anything and everything.

Problem is anytime I see this kind of nicely decorated well thought cafe, I'm very worry about the quality in the cup. As I said earlier somewhere, the nicely decorated cafe tends to serve lousy coffee. Let see how it worked out here at Unar.The much talked about Banana Caramel Cake was better than I expected. Though I don't like the whole thing, banana inside tasted surprisingly refreshingly it helped save the cake. The rest had some sort of hotel/catering signature to it.Once inside, the cake showcase was eerily familiar and looked like it could be at Barista Jam, Cafe Corridor or Xen Coffee. They seemed to share the same cafe shop, La Rose Noire, from the look. I thought this kind of stylish cafe will do this thing in house. Guess I was wrong then... This is the cup that seemed to be highly recommended here, milk drink

The texture of my Cappuccino was actually quite nice and closed to my all time favorite Crema Coffee. However, you had to pass through the hotter than optimal range temperature in the cup to get it. If you drank a bigger gulp like me in order to try to appreciate the sweetness of the well prepared frothed milk, it will be hot enough to scald your mouth. After you felt hot and scald, you got the nice texture... But since all the taste bud was kinda say bye-bye due to temperature shock, you got no sweetness if it's in there...

I left it to cool down a bit and the coffee base rear its ugly head of staled/acrid/rancid and all those bad tasting notes. Even the decently frothed milk cannot cover it, what can?

Like most imported Italian cafe, milk is the only thing they can do quite good to make up for the lagging imported overroasted/staled bean that some considered giving a complex tasting note with its dark roasty tone similar to but not the same as dark chocolate. Still the capp was quite nice in a way if you can ask barista to make it warm, not hot, and hopefully the coffee was either fresh and lagging but not rancid like the cups I had at Coffee Plus so you'll be OK with what you have.

For this cup, it's really borderline toward just OK to a failure. Still I suggest this cup for those who wants some coffee here to check whether you might want to risk your palette for black coffee where there's no place to hide... This machine seemed to be the same as another shop down the road, Cafe Y Taberna, with Compak grinder and Wega espresso machine. It's not the last word in the espresso machine but it may be good enough, particularly for the kind of bean they picked.Let go to the bottomline, the black coffee.

I order espresso but the cup served was really really short, one of the shortest shot I have had so far.

It was not that bad, particularly on the body side but it's no match for locally roasted coffee on the layer of tastes and transparency. The cup gave me a dark to very dark tone with a dirty finish. Someone could say it's dark chocolate. I didn't think so.My second shot: It seemed to look better in the picture I guess the barista kinda alerted on me a bit. Nevertheless, this was the worse shot. I got a clear acrid, dark toasted rice with a very dark ending. Its body/mouthfeel was kinda there but it provided a strong support to the dark roast it's quite unbearable in the cup. I cannot sense any nice acidity at all, ie total darkness of sort where there was no light at the end of tunnel kinda thing. If you like your coffee dark, smoky, ashy with big body that seemed to last forever, this is the coffee for you. Definitely not me.

For those who follow the renaissance of good coffee from Indie cafe in the US, this is a cup to avoid. It reminds me of an old man drinking a cup of black coffee and give younger generation a sip, hoping to see that kid makes face and hate coffee for their life... This cup fits that category well...

One last note on the aftertaste, 30 minutes after I left Unar, the dark roasty tone still haunted me with some metallic aftertaste... This is one of the terrible aftertaste I've ever had.People told me that dark roast coffee makes good iced coffee. So I try Shakerato to see how it was like. Shakerato at Unar was nothing memorable. I thought I had the worst cup at 18 Grams but now that that cup at 18 Grams tasted just like a breath of fresh air which, until these days, I still didn't like it. So, you can guess my recommendation here... I can tell you that I'm very disappointed and don't understand why people are crazy about this place. If the coffee is second or third important things here and all you need is a cutesy, stylish place of sort, it will fit your bill well. The OK sign I have is actually more of a low OK sign or a border line between an OK and a crying face. There's some potential in milk drink but you need to dig it out and hope for a fresh coffee on that day.

In fact, the whole Tai Hang area as the up and coming good cafe is a joke to me. All three much talked about cafes including Kindergarten, Cafe Y Taberna and Unar are at best par to subpar. If I were among leading cafes in Hong Kong currently, including the genuine hot bed area for coffee like Sheung Wan, I have absolute nothing to worry about. If one said the coffee quality in Hong Kong is now improving, definitely cafes in Tai Hang are not good examples. Far from it... Very far!

Mind you that ambiance plays a lot of role in drinks and people who get used to the roasty tone of Italian coffee may find these places very palatable. Like coffee taster at Starbucks who overlooked those charred taste of "Starbucks roast", some of these people will say the light roast from Indie these days "MISS" some tasting note in the cup and it could be so hard for them to accept that it's the roasty tone they missed as this is not the hip and happening thing in the current Indie trend who roasted their coffee light to show its origin tastes. Just my 2 cents though.

In short, don't waste your time in Tai Hang if you want good coffee.. Go directly to Sheung Wan. Even Causeway Bay as an area offers a much better coffee than what Tai Hang can deliver right now, a sad note indeed... Barista Jam, Coco Espresso, Soft Aroma, 18 Grams and Cafe Corridor all really have nothing to worry about and these Tai Hang cafe can learn a thing or two about good coffee from the experience and decent cafes I mentioned.

If you insist on visiting this place of this areat, this is a good area to visit once and forget about it... It's more than enough for the kind of coffee they deliver.

Have came across a few articles featuring this cafe...and happened to be in CWB yesterday, and so I went there..

the cafe was so well decorated, and it was really very classy..The only drawback is that seats are really limited...and you have to try your luck...

Lucky enough to get a table....and tried their Caramel Banana Cake + Iced LatteBut it seems that a lot of pastry were not available, not sure if it is because they hadn't baked them yet (i got there at around 1600, while the cafe opened at 1500..)

Anyway..it was really an awesome experience!! Guess I would have gone down everyday if i live nearby..

Will go there and try their shakerato very soon!!

A new hole-in-the-wall Cafe has opened in Tai Hang, said to be run by some very capable baristas who’ve picked up their skills from training in a reknowned local cafe - thanks to Vincent from nearby cafe Cafe Y Taberna for providing this information! Both shops use the same Italian coffee (for now) from a blend of 7 coffee beans. Painted in lumpy black paint with tables and seating arranged directly onto the pedestrian path and back alley, it almost flouts the law, but is exactly what the Hong Kong coffee scene has been missing for all these years and which 18 Grams Cafe have also been trying to lobby for this movement and cultural shift with their Causeway Bay shop ~ so far without much success from acquiring the required licences.

Original Review with Photos:

http://foodofhongkong.blogspot.com/2011/02/unar-coffee-company-12.html