Night At The Cafe Toko Kopi Tengah Kota

While it’s rather sketchy, apparently there’s a cafe that only about a month ago caught my radar. The cafe isn’t really indexed on google maps and the only time I found it was because I explored the neighborhood around it. I knew that there would be something interesting in the area since it’s school districts and the square of the city. So, I am assuming there has to be at least one cafe around it. Although in the city there’s not as many cafes as in Yogyakarta, every month, there’s always something interesting to visit. The only problem is that most cafes are located outside of the city and more into the nook and crannies of it. Well, today I decided to check it out for dinner. I don’t normally do coffee dinner but why not spice my life up?

Let’s call this experience, nights at the cafe. I rarely go during the night but the cafe has the mood of romantic night coffee dates except for me, my dinner date is with my laptop. The place is called TokoKopi TengahKota which translates to coffee shop in the middle of the city. It’s quite a long name for a cafe place but it’s not necessary in the middle of the city either. It’s like the end of the main area of the city. Anyhow, we have spacious areas with interior blending brutalism & minimalism into one. Of course, outdoor areas with some trees are a must for these places, afterall, we live in the tropics and people build the cafe with that in mind.

The place sells a mix of coffee, non-coffee, snacks, rice bowl and spaghetti. It’s like the standard menu at every cafe in town. I personally love that mix because sometimes I stayed for hours and didn’t want to leave. So, having food and coffee altogether make perfect sense at times. Just at times, otherwise, I only like coffee places that specifically sell specialty coffees. It didn’ take me long enough to screen the menu, I ordered berrycano and spaghetti alfredo.

By the way, Berrycano is also getting common at most cafes around. It’s a blend of americano with strawberry syrup. As berries on top, they added slices of strawberry inside the coffee. I’ll show you pictures after this.

Inside the place, there were about three areas to choose from and after screening all the spots, the bar in front of the bar with the big glass facing the garden caught my attention the most. They properly put the socket below the table and since my laptop wasn’t 100% charged, it was indeed the perfect spot. While it’s not really air-conditioned, it was breezy since outside is currently drizzling and pretty windy. The place is also perfect for meeting because they have a long table that can accommodate more than 6 people.

The place is also pretty suitable for WFC (work from a cafe) although I did not test the Wifi because I have my own. On a side note, I don’t get it when people use cafe wifi to work from, it’s pretty vulnerable to attacks and cafes obviously don’t hire cybersecurity to maintain their network. It’s always best to bring your own wifi or use your own network in public.

It didn’t take long for the food to arrive. As I just finished prepping my laptop and its miscellaneous, my order came. While the spaghetti looks pretty standard, after one bite, it was something that surprised me. The spaghetti was full of oregano making it pretty indelible. The cook just sprinkled way too much of it. While the coffee was fairly decent, it indeed tastes like the common berrycano that you can find in many places, it has strawberry flavor with caffeine kick. Although after drinking that, I was drinking cappuccino to clean my taste buds and getting more caffeine.

I would rate their cappuccino just under 6 while the latte art is pretty decent, it was the too watery/milky taste that came out of it. But they also give iced water which I wondered why. After a few sips, it’s like there was something wrong with the espresso+milk ratio. The latte art after one shake was also gone.Usually, whenever I go to a nice coffee shop, they always last until the last sip. But, considering it was priced 1$ compared to the usual $2 cappuccino, there’s definitely a striking difference.

The only thing nice about the place was the quietness and how supportive it was to work from. Other than that, my food and coffee experience has been quite underwhelming. It’s not the place I would take family or friends, unless I am looking for something around $1 that gives you some caffeine kick and best bang for the bucks.