Sour beans: Coffee Roasting Division at Pla Dib fails to raise the roasted bar

In a cement and glass box outside of Pla Dib, the well-established Thai-Japanese fusion restaurant in Ari, sits Bangkok’s newest challenger in the premier coffee scene. Like the western restaurant Roast in Thonglor’s Seenspace, the matter-of-factly named Coffee Roasting Division contains a full-on roasting machine on the premises, and judging from appearances alone, this presents a good enough reason to hope.

The mise-en-scène is certainly spot on. The heavy door – made of stained wood – slides open to reveal more of the same wood lining the walls. To one side of the room sits a display rack containing slices of carrot cake, croissants and cookies. Above those treats are sexily packaged coffee, fleur de sel, Pla Dib sauces, loose tobacco and imported beer.

At the bar is a beautiful La Marzocco espresso maker, as well as a drip coffee setup. All the ingredients are in place to create an exceptional coffee in a setting that exemplifies the minimalist design aesthetic that seems popular with restaurateurs and café owners the world over.

So why is the coffee so unexceptional?

In short: over-roasting. In the drip coffee I ordered – iced, without sugar – the only discernable flavor I could get was charcoal. If the color black had a taste, this is what it would be. The quality of the roast matters less in lattes and cappuccinos, of course, which is what you’re better off ordering.

The black coffee is no worse than what you’d get from any run-of-the-mill café, but with such expensive machinery, and coffee sourced from locales as far afield as Indonesia and Kenya, it’s embarrassing that what you get is far less than exceptional.

It’s telling, perhaps, that when you order a drip coffee, you are also brought a small beaker full of simple syrup. It might be worth taking the hint.

James Yu is a freelance writer and editor. You can follow him on instagram @jamcyu and tumblr.



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