Specialty Coffee COCORO, Hakodate

COCORO is one of the specialty coffee spots I visited in my recent trip to Hakodate. The owner quite thoroughly explained the menu to us - there are a range of single origin beans to choose from at medium to dark roasts. There is also an English version of the menu available Similar to The Blues Tree, the owner seemed at pains to mention that this place was specifically just a roaster and not a cafe. Nonetheless, they had some seating, pour-over coffee, plus a small selection of cakes as well. (Seems like a cafe to me!) I find that cafes in Tokyo don’t seem to stress on this cafe/roaster distinction so much, but if I had to hypothesise, maybe businesses in Hakodate need to rely more on the bean roasting aspect (and selling that on to other cafes) due to the smaller population. Or maybe there’s a bit of a expectation placed upon cafes regarding the level of customer service, and roasters feel they can’t necessarily live up to that? One plus of COCORO is that there are samples you can…