Born from a Love of Slowness
In 2012, Keiko Tanaka returned to Kyoto after a decade working as a coffee buyer in Ethiopia and Colombia. She came back carrying notebooks filled with flavour profiles, farm contacts, and a singular idea: that the best coffee in the world deserved a space worthy of it.
She found a 100-year-old machiya townhouse in Higashiyama — its roof tiles worn, its timber dark with age — and spent a year restoring it by hand with local craftsmen. Kuroyuri Coffee opened its doors in the spring of 2012 to a quiet neighbourhood that gradually became a pilgrimage for coffee lovers.
The name, Kuroyuri (黒百合), means "black lily" — a rare Alpine wildflower, elusive and beautiful. It felt right for a place that doesn't advertise itself, that rewards the curious who find it.
