Da’an District, Taipei City｜RUFOUS COFFEE ROASTERS 2

Great service even with only one staff with a full house, nice ambiance and excellent coffee. If you're a cream cheese lover, I highly recommend the sandwich which came on a light baguette. Also grabbed some beans to take home for my pour overs.

I enjoy the iced drop coffee here. I consider myself the purveyor of fine coffee, Rufous is ok and this new-open store is fast and convenient if you work in the place along MRT brown line. If you are looking for tasty baked goods you might select another location though, those aren't that great- there are several cafes around with comparable coffee, but this new-open store is probably the most professional and good at making great coffee if you just seek an REAL coffee. Highly recommend !

I'm not a coffee expert, but I always enjoyed the aesthetic of Rufous' shops. The boss-day-labourer, Mr Yang, has created something magical in each location he operates, and this is his second shop (actually his third location, after the original Fuxing shop moved, to the adjacent corner across a laneway, many years ago). I'm not sure exactly how he creates this magic, but it might be a combination of his work ethic, and his design aesthetic. Yang brings a meditative chill-intensity to his daily work, which these days he prefers to discharge in a routine of coffee roasting from his, admittedly very nicely designed, man-shed: a glass windowed room visible from the street and the shop interior that takes up just less than half the cafe. This roast room functions like a NYC sidewalk studio where you can watch the artist work. When you pair the calm spectacle of Yang, plus assistants, picking, weighing and doing all sorts of roast-work on industrial-looking machines, with the design of the rest of the cafe, you have something approximating the Rufous-magic. The cafe is decorated with a definitely obsessive attention to detail: dimpled black marble tabletops, dark-lacquered pine for the custom shelving and benches, and black aluminum chairs with hardwood seats filigreed with a star pattern. Slate-colored leather upholsters a backrest that covers an entire wall, contributing to the speakeasy feel suggested by the art deco lighting and beveled mirror paneling. The most undervalued but Rufous-esque feature is the plant-girded entrance, which gives the impression you're entering a shrine to coffee, which is pretty much what this cafe is: an efficient temple that manufactures beans for their in house brews as well as export to local cafes, while producing a that vibe mixes relaxation with intense work, like coffee itself. It's a weird combination, but if you like cafes, you'll probably enjoy this place. Or if you're a connoisseur... of anything, then you'll probably like it too. That's because everything is carefully selected, including the tunes: a low-key selection that's diverse while being harmonious. The boss curates these in part by using the Shazam app to lift tracks he likes from other cafes, as well as spending time in the record collection and listening room at Eslite. Aside from quality coffee and other drinks, including non caffeinated options, there's a handful of satisfying but small sandwiches and cakes.