Perk Up, Trusty Taste Coffee Comes to Guanghua Lu

While workers with offices in and around Guanghua Lu aren’t devoid of café options, they certainly do have fewer choices than their counterparts in, say, the CBD or Sanlitun. That will make newbie on the scene Trusty Taste a convenient, neighboring novelty, considering it’s sturdy if unoriginal list of imported coffees along with standards like flat whites, Americanos, and cappuccinos.

To be sure, the humble but burgeoning little café on the second floor of Guanghua Soho faces very stiff competition from immediate nearby restaurants: Glo eatery with trendy coffees like bulletproof, and Caravan a little further west down the road, which specializes in Moroccan fare and has a strong selection of java. However, the plethora of hutong, CBD, and Sanlitun cafés that have sprung up in the past year or so, many offering similar arrays of foreign beans like Ethiopian, Kenyan, and Colombian, with some such spots slinging varieties from other locales here and there, have all set a precedent of sorts that should leave a pretty considerable demand for a nearer option for caffeine-craving workers at Guanghua.

That’s not to say that Trusty Taste is going to put any of those more high profile cafés out of business. When it comes to decor, there were piles of documents and furniture strewn every which way in the back corner of the café which, aside from a handful of patrons at a table near the door, was otherwise empty. That startlingly ramshackle vibe was thankfully offset once we saw the coffee menu, which featured a decent looking selection like RMB 15 espressos, RMB 17 Americanos, RMB 25 lattes, RMB 22 flat whites, along with the less common RMB 43 Blue Mountain Jamaican, which we noticed lately at more upscale Seesaw Coffee in Wangfujing a few weeks back.

Better still: the service and flavor of the coffee overcame the flaws in the surroundings. Our barista sheepishly admitted they were doing some remodeling that day, which isn’t typically a problem because the majority of their business is delivery. Despite that lapse in judgment, they shouldn’t give up on in-store service entirely, because the barista readied our RMB 34 order of snow peak Colombian coffee with noticeable care, pausing partway through to let the coffee bloom, then finishing the pour. The result: a subtly bitter cupful with notes of acidity, neither of which was overwhelming. It also proved to be a caffeine rife selection, giving us a quick and sustained boost after we sipping each piping hot drop down.

So while the ambiance is certainly lacking for anyone hoping to pull up their laptop for a bit of remote work while stopping by, our more than competently readied order left us ranking Trusty Taste in the upper mid-tier of specialty cafés in the capital. The menu isn’t varied or well-sourced enough, and the flavors don’t abound to such a degree, to bring it anywhere near the very best cafés that Beijing has to offer. Nevertheless, Trusty holds its own among midrange competitors thanks to on-point service and a decent number of imported beans, and its location in a relatively untapped area is certainly an added bonus. Now if only the staff could spruce the interior up a bit for anyone who wants to stick around for a while, then this café would truly be a trusty destination to get caffeinated.

Perk up with the Beijinger's complete coverage of the capital's café scene here.

Trusty Taste
Daily 9am-7pm. Unit 119C, Guanghua Lu Soho, Bldg 1, 22 Guanghua Lu, Chaoyang District (135 5216 8014)
朝阳区光华路22号光华路SOHO 119C室

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Photos: Kyle Mullin