North District, Hsinchu City｜Former Residence of Dr. Li Kecheng

The shop is well-decorated and opens at a historical location. The cafe is decorated in a traditional Japanese style. The ceiling is low, and the spaces are limited. They do not allow reservations, and thus, you will need to taste your luck for empty seats when you visit them. Please note that you must take off your shoes and wear a pair of socks when you enter. We ordered two desserts (a cake and a pudding) and two drinks. The pudding tasted sweet and sour as it was drizzled with espresso coffee. The cake was half-baked, which made it soft and fluffy.

A beautiful coffee shop in a historic building. This is a wonderfully restored Japanese building tucked away down an alley next to FE21 department store. As well as interesting coffees they sell light bread based snacks. I choose the lemon soda coffee which was an interesting mix of homemade lemon soda and expresso (add slowly). Surprisingly it’s a good mixture. To each I went for a set that came with strawberries and cream bread plus a banana and caramel bread. Both were delicious and the bread itself was excellent. Note that the building is fairly small and I imagine that it can get busy so they limit your stay to 2 hours. The alley to get to the residence is near the bottom of the road and has wooden slats.

Cafe coffee shop in lovely historic Japanese home. Entrance is an easy to miss pathway between buildings. The house is not visible from the street!