Why I keep looking for the perfect café
The many ways cities and cafés will change you if you pay attention
When we were 10, 12 and 15 my sisters and I got embarked on a 1-month trip to India. I believe it wasn’t quite a month but rather 2 weeks, but as you know when you’re that age, summer holidays feel endless.
Twenty years later, I still remember this trip vividly as if it were yesterday - almost. Leaving a country like Switzerland for India, landing in Mumbai in the middle of the night was quite something.
I remember us famished, walking around looking for an open restaurant. We walked through dark back streets until we found this hole in a wall, full with locals eating what smelled like curry. We entered and were shown a table close to the kitchen. The staff was desperately trying to tell us something as my dad ordered food for all of us but the language barrier was too big to understand their warning. The food was hot, burning hot and we left all five hoping we didn’t need to share the same bathroom that very night.
But mostly, it was the beginning of a crazy month spent traveling in trains from Mumbai to Goa to Hyderabad and then Cochin, and finally Pondicherry. It was as scary as magical and, at times, we all really wanted to go home. But at the end of it all, we found joy and, every one of us came back changed forever.
I often think back to this vacation as a time where I became conscious in ways I never was before. And I think places can do that to you. Welcome you as you are, yet imprint you so hard that you can only leave changed.
At least cafés have done that to me since (soon) forever.
In the fifteen years since opening The Blend, I have lived in and passed through more countries than I can count on two hands. Japan, Colombia, Rwanda, Turkey, France, Brazil, Spain… cities in-between, and places I didn’t expect to love. Yet in every single one of them, without fail, there was a café that found me first.
One I’ll never forget was in Kigali. I was there for an off-site with my former employer, a SaaS company I was working for at the time, and a few of us slipped away one afternoon and walked into what felt like an entirely different world.
Kivu Noir sits in the greenery, under trees, as if the city had decided to grow a café rather than build one. It was full of young people talking fast, notebooks open, ideas flying, people chasing something and tons of coffee cups, piling up.
As I made my way to the barista, that is when it happened. What always happens in cafés if you let it, by now I know that’s how it works for me. You start asking questions about the coffee, the space, the people, their dream and your skin gets goosebumps. You realize right there the wild amount of love and intention that went into making this space feel the way it does. It was in the way the natural light was allowed to filter through the canopy directly onto the brew bar, erasing the line between inside and out. It was the fact that they were roasting local Rwandan beans just steps from where we sat, creating a tangible loop of origin and community. Every detail, every operational choice was made so that anyone walking in off the street would feel, without being told, that this was their place too.
That’s the same feeling India left me with when leaving. Feeling like after a while, I could belong anywhere.
The places that stay with you are rarely the ones that were perfect.
They’re the ones that were started with a personal intention, maybe a dream for a new career, maybe a common project with your siblings, maybe a crazy bet with a friend…
These cafes have all been built with enough care that you can feel it the moment you walk in, and enough soul that you can carry something out with you when you leave. And opening The Blend taught me how everything matters. The space, your craft, the music, your energy… the list is long.
But through that, I learned that a café’s soul isn’t an accident, it comes with the series of deliberate design and business choices you make along the way. It’s the decision to place the espresso machine low enough on the counter so the barista can look every customer in the eye but also close enough to the window, so you can serve coffee right there, it’s the playlist you compile so that it matches our moods on a rainy or sunny day, the acoustic planning so the music wraps around you instead of shouting at you, ….
And ever since leaving South Africa behind, there isn’t one place I traveled to without a café in mind and once again, every café I visited imprinted me with a feeling, a sentiment, a lingering taste on my tongue, a thought, new inspiration and sometimes desire. All emotions I find so similar to discovering a new country.
A week ago, after digging into some boxes, I came across one of my many notebooks. The first entry was written on the day of my 25th birthday. Exactly 10 years ago in 3 months. At twenty-five, the dust had only just started to settle after building and selling The Blend. Yet, I was still obsessing over the exact things I am writing to you about today.
And though so much has happened since, I kept thinking how little I had actually changed, how little my desires had changed. Is it a bad thing or a good thing? From what I heard we never really age, our bodies do though and so with that in mind, I realised maybe it’s what places do to us, cafés in particular. They keep reminding us who we really are.
Because sometime some places just know you before you do.
Now I want to hear from you. What is the one café, anywhere in the world, that left an imprint on you? The one you walked into and immediately felt like you belonged?
A few cafés that changed me
Epoca Café Bar (Cartagena, Colombia): The perfect example of the day-to-night transition. They master the hospitality art of shifting the energy from a bright morning coffee haven to an incredibly vibrant evening bar, without ever losing their core identity and their passion for coffee.
Kitsuné (Paris, France): The magic of picking the perfect location is what I thought when I walked into that space for the first time a decade ago. Perfectly designed, playful and delicious coffee right in front of the intimate garden of le Palais Royal.
The Blend (Cape Town, South Africa): The one I built, the one that built me. This space taught me that negotiating a smart lease wasn’t just about financial survival; it was also about buying the creative freedom to build a space with genuine soul.
Kivu Noir (Kigali, Rwanda): Proved to me that a café doesn’t need traditional walls to hold a community. The way they integrated their roasting process into the natural environment completely redefined my understanding of what a “local” coffee shop could be.
The Good Day Velo Bikes & Coffee (Kyoto, Japan): Showed me that extreme meticulousness doesn’t have to feel intimidating. A masterclass in combining two distinct passions; cycling and coffee into one seamless, highly curated retail experience.
Faw Coffee (Istanbul, Turkey): A brilliant reminder of how a tiny footprint can still impact you when walking in and feeling as if this space was from a movie.
☕️ ♥️
Thank you for being here! It means the world to me. If you love reading The Coffee Dispatch and want to further support my writing, please like this post, leave a comment, share it with a friend, or upgrade to a paid subscription.
Follow along on LinkedIn, or read my LinkedIn newsletter for practical café & coffee gear tips, and if you’re interested in collaborating, send me an email at hello@juliehanell.com.
I can't believe I haven't read this one yet!