Mermaid Coffee Roasters is cafe specialising in specialty pour over coffee, located in a tall and narrow 4-storey building (complete with a rooftop) near Ikebukuro station. They have three branches in total - I’m not sure if that quite makes it a chain yet - with one of its stores all the way up in Sapporo, of all places. I had the chance to visit that store in Hokkaido a couple of years ago while looking for an early-morning coffee and I quite enjoyed the experience, so I was quite keen to check out this branch as well.
Their trademark is this super cozy yet eclectic interior, with plenty of comfy chairs and art on the walls. For their pour over, you can choose from a couple of varieties of light and dark roast beans (both single origin and blend).
Very helpfully, they even have samples available of all the pour over beans, so you can take your time choosing if you are not sure.
Of course, you can get a regular coffee with milk as well - when I was in Hokkaido this is probably what I got since I hadn’t gotten hooked on pour overs yet (from memory, it was good!)
For the light roast beans, they had three single origin beans from Colombia ranging between 1060 - 1800 yen for a cup. I decided to go for the Colombia Aroma Nativo (1060 yen) - and it tasted really good! It was very light and fruity without any sort of acidic aftertaste.
I later realised that Aroma Nativo was just the name of the producer, although if I looked closer at the label it didn’t really seem to say the actual bean variety on there.
Looking at Mermaid Coffee’s website (where they also sell the beans) it seems to be Aroma Nativo’s Pink Bourbon. Pink Bourbon is my favourite bean so it tracks that this would be the one I wanted to drink after I got to taste the samples.
The dark roasts and their blend pour overs are a bit cheaper at 710 - 910 yen a cup.
I did want to pick up a bag of beans, but all the light roast single origin beans were quite pricey by Tokyo standards - 2500 yen for 100g. Instead I chose to pick up a bag of their blend light roasted beans, which was a bit more reasonable 1500 yen for 140g.
Heading up the narrow flight of stairs, I took a seat in a comfy couch-chair on the third floor.
I enjoyed my coffee together with a porcelain lamp of a dude playing the violin together with a lady on the piano.
If you are drinking in store, note that they do have a 2 hour limit “during busy times”. It wasn’t too busy when I went though, so I think as long as you pop by on a quiet day you can take your time with a book or laptop and they aren’t going to kick you out.
The store is well-reviewed with 4.7 stars and over 1200 reviews on Google, but hasn’t seemed to have been totally taken over by the social media crowd so it was pretty easy to get a seat at around 10:30 on a Monday. Actually it seemed quite busy at 11am, but by 11:30am the third floor was basically empty.
I really liked this place! The coffee is good, the vibes are comfy and it’s not super-crowded (hitting the perfect trifecta for coffee shops, really). I think if I lived right by here I would want to pop by all the time. If you’re new to pour over and get overwhelmed by the idea of having to pick a bean, this is a great place to try it too, since you can sample everything before you buy it.
As for the beans I took home, I grinded it at my normal 15 clicks. To be honest I didn’t have any beans at home so I started drinking it probably sooner than I should have (they were fresh, so it was literally the day after it was roasted). I went as high as 96°C to try and remove the sour taste, and that tasted alright.
Of course it’s a blend - so it was nowhere near as good as the single origin bean I got to drink in store.
Considering the prices, I would say that this would be a great go-to coffee store when you’re looking to drink a fancy pourover, but I wouldn’t normally want to buy my beans here - 2500 yen for 100g is a bit out of my budget. For reference, I was able to get 100g of Pink Bourbon from Tsukikoya Coffee Roaster in Yokohama for 1650 yen, compared to the 2500 yen price here.
Of course the bean here is from a different producer - and the website mentions that it comes from a microlot which probably explains the part of the price difference. Plus I assume there is some sort of markup since Mermaid is more of a coffee store first, and seller of beans second.
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