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Halfway between Yasaka Shrine and Kōdai-ji, on the flagstoned lane of Ishibe-kōji, the company that gave the world the V60 has opened a coffee room inside an old Kyoto machiya. Hario Cafe is part showroom, part tea-house pause, and one of the few places in Higashiyama where the coffee ritual feels as considered as the street outside.

Siphon coffee, a courtyard garden, Kyoto’s most beautiful lane

AMBIENCE >

Ishibe-kōji is the lane Kyoto reaches for when it wants to make a point: a narrow, stone-paved passage of charred-cedar walls, lantern-lit gateways and discreet ryokan entrances, protected as part of a national preservation district for historic buildings. Hario Cafe sits along it in a partly renovated machiya, and the step from lane to room is a gentle one — dark timber, soft light and, at the heart of the space, a tsuboniwa courtyard garden with stone lanterns that does most of the decorative heavy lifting.

There are only around twenty seats. The room doubles as a showroom, so the shelves are lined with drippers, servers, kettles, siphons and a small amount of hand blown glass jewellery, most of them available to buy once you have watched them in use. Arrive close to opening and you may have the place very nearly to yourself; by late morning the lane’s foot traffic — much of it international — finds its way inside, and the calm becomes considerably more sociable.

COFFEE >

It would be strange to come to Hario and not order the siphon. Brewed in the kind of heatproof glass vessels the company has been making since 1948, it is coffee as theatre — water climbing into the upper chamber, a slow stir, then the draw-down — and the result is smooth, aromatic and notably clean. It is a mild cup, which some will love and stronger-coffee drinkers may find a touch light; give it time to cool and the character of the bean comes forward.

Around five coffees are on offer at any one time, including the house KYOTO BLEND, made for this store and described in terms of dried-raisin sweetness and a dark-chocolate bitterness, alongside specialty beans from roasters around Japan. Pour-over through the V60 (hot or iced) is the other obvious choice, and a drip coffee made to a world-champion brewing recipe shows just how far a paper filter can go. A café au lait looks after the milk drinkers. None of this is inexpensive — a siphon coffee runs to around ¥1,400 — but you are paying for the room, the lane and the ritual as much as the cup.

EAT >

Food is deliberately brief, a supporting cast rather than a reason to visit. The Baked Cheesecake, brought in from Pine Fields Market in Nagoya, is the pick and the natural partner to the siphon, served as a set with your coffee. A Classic Chocolat offers a darker, denser alternative, while hot-pressed Baguette Sandwiches — ham and cheese, or basil chicken and cheese — make a light lunch for those walking the line between Kiyomizu-dera and Gion.

CONCLUSION >

Hario Cafe is not trying to be Kyoto’s most serious specialty coffee bar, and those hunting for the city’s boldest cup will find it elsewhere. What it offers instead is rarer: a quiet seat beside a courtyard garden, on the most beautiful lane in Higashiyama, with coffee brewed in the very equipment that changed how the world makes filter coffee.

Go early, order the siphon and the cheesecake, and leave room for a little shopping — the Kyoto-only drippers and glass jewellery make far better souvenirs than anything on Ninenzaka.

Hario began in October 1921 as Hiromu Sibata Works, a laboratory glassware maker founded by Hiromu Shibata in Kanda Sudachō, Tokyo, turning out beakers, flasks and petri dishes. In 1948 the company turned its heatproof-glass expertise to the home with its first household coffee siphon, the “Hiromu 50”, named for the founder, and the following year succeeded in melting its own proprietary Hario Glass. The name itself is usually explained as a play on hari-ō, the “king of glass”. Today Hario remains the only heatproof-glass manufacturer in Japan with its own factory, and it is still led by the Shibata family.

The cone-shaped dripper took rather longer. A prototype appeared in 1980, but the V60 — named for its V shape and 60-degree angle, with spiral ribs and a single large hole — was released only in 2005, after years of trial and error. Embraced by competition baristas and the third-wave movement, it became the global standard for pour-over coffee.

The Hario Cafe stores are the company’s own showcase, with outposts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Karuizawa and Kanazawa. Kyoto opened on 8 July 2024 as the first in the Kansai region, and doubles as a satellite shop for Hario Lampwork Factory, the handmade glass jewellery line founded in 2015 to preserve the company’s hand-glassblowing skills and create skilled work for women artisans. Look for the Kyoto-only pieces: the Pavé range, inspired by the paving stones of Ishibe-kōji, and drippers made with Kyoto tableware house Tachikichi, including one decorated with the frolicking animals of the Chōjū-giga scrolls.