After working for two years at Kyoto’s Cafe Phalam and, before that, a year at a coffee shop in Toronto, barista Shinichiro Nakanishi opened his own establishment in 2014 in his family’s home in a village on the border between Osaka and Kyoto Prefectures. For the first three years, his specialty coffee shop was merely an addition to the family business – a haberdashery opened over a century ago by Shinichiro’s great-grandfather. However, in 2017, the haberdashery section had to close for good: its regular customers had reached an advanced age, and younger people had started buying clothes online.

Initially, Nakanishi prepared coffee using beans from Crear Coffee in Shizuoka Prefecture, but in 2020, he acquired his own roasting machine, allowing the café to switch to its own beans. The interior of the old village house also underwent significant changes: the entire space was transformed into a spacious atrium without partitions, with only a few nostalgic elements, like chandeliers made from wagon wheels, tungsten-filament lamps, and a vinyl record player, left to evoke the idyllic past.

Despite its relatively secluded location, far from large cities, the café is popular: drivers and cyclists who use the nearby busy highway connecting Osaka and Kameoka often stop by to enjoy a cup of coffee (as well as cocoa and spiced masala chai) with Nakanishi.