Every Sunday at the De Anza College Farmers Market in Cupertino for the last year, a crowd has formed in front of a white tent adorned with a handmade Indonesian batik-style banner, stamped with the image of coffee beans growing on a branch. Inside, Hijau co-owner Lisa Maria transmutes Indonesian snacks into coffee drinks that are infused with pandan, torched ginger-lemongrass syrup or sweet soy sauce. Hijau consistently drew the longest line at the market, and after only two years of popping up, Maria and co-owner Ryan Prawiradjaja just opened their own café in San Jose.
Bay Area coffee enthusiasts are spoiled with choice: opulent $105 coffee, co-fermented beans bursting with fruit flavors, and shops that specialize in styles from around the world, including Yemen, Ethiopia, Latin America, China and Vietnam. Missing, until recently, was Indonesian coffee, or kopi, known for the distinctive flavors and processing methods of its beans, which are grown across several of the country’s more than 17,000 islands, each cluster with its own terroir. There are numerous Indonesian coffee preparation styles, including kopi tubruk (steeped, unfiltered grounds), kopi saring (coffee strained through a sock-like filter) and the laborious, costly kopi luwak (made with coffee beans that were fermented through the digestive system of a civet, a mammal native to Asia and Africa).
In the U.S., Indonesian coffee has long been best known as Sumatra — famously the preferred, earthy bean of former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. But a new generation of specialty Indonesian coffee shops in the Bay Area hope to change that limited perception, showcasing the depth and breadth of the scene through both tradition and experimentation. Hijau joins the region’s two other dedicated Indonesian cafés, Kopi Bar in Berkeley and Kopi Kita (formerly Kopiku) in San Francisco, which is gearing up to open a second location. Their momentum coincides with the growing taste for Southeast Asian flavors in the U.S., where ingredients like pandan, ube and blue pea flower have officially entered the mainstream, appearing on menus at Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Peet’s Coffee.
The Bay Area’s Indonesian food scene has also grown in fits and starts. While longstanding restaurants, including Borobudur in San Francisco and Jayakarta in Berkeley, have closed in recent years, food trucks and popups have carried the torch — as well as the region’s most prominent newcomer, Indonesian-Texas barbecue star Fikscue…