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This Taguig café is one of Asia’s most beautiful coffee shops

%Arabica’s 257 McKinley branch. Photo from @arabica.ph on Instagram

A coffee shop should always be a sight to behold. It’s environs, after all, are the first source of inspiration at our disposal as caffeine slowly wakes up the brain. Tatler Asia recently named nine of what its editors consider to be the most beautiful coffee shops in the region, singling out a cafe in each of the nine Asian cities. 



“Around the world, as cafes continue to soar in popularity and coffee consumption per capita steadily increases, it’s even more of an imperative to stand out with great architecture and thoughtful design,” says the writer Charmaine Mok who also explains that the list is a sort of prelude to the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards the publishing group is putting together for October. 

Anyway, the coffee shop that earned the media outfit’s nod is the light-filled %Arabica located in 257 McKinley in Taguig, which happens to be already the brand’s third outlet in Manila. “The impressive glass facade and illuminated ceiling highlights the interiors even from street level,” the article says. “The amphitheatre seating has echoes of Banaue’s iconic rice terraces, offering drinkers an unusual vantage point to view the coffee making action below.” 



The cafe traces its roots in Tokyo, Japan where it’s founder and creative director Kenneth Shoji was raised. His goal was to “create the best coffee possible” for which he bought a coffee farm in Hawaii. Shoji opened his flagship store in Kyoto in 2014, a humble setup in Higashiyama, one of Kyoto’s “best preserved historic districts.” 

%Arabica already has 97 stores all over the world, 51 of which are in China alone. 


Article and Photo originally posted by ABS-CBN last August, 2021 and written by ANCX Staff.

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