What is Chinese-style coffee? Chinese traditional snacks + coffee become the traffic password for coffee shops

There was a time when Western pastries were practically mandatory in a coffee shop, and selling Chinese snacks was seen as completely out of place.

Part of that came from coffee being an imported product, shaped by Western cafe culture, and Asian cafes copied the Western pastry pairing along with it.

On the other hand, coffee used to be rich and mellow, while Western pastries were themselves made from a mix of flavourful ingredients. One bite would leave a film of butter and sugar on the tongue, softening the perception of bitterness in the coffee and making its other flavours and aromas easier to pick apart.

Today, though, as coffee has settled into daily life in China, Western pastries are no longer the centre of attention in a coffee shop.

Chinese Snacks + Coffee: How Popular Are They?

Traditional Chinese snacks, once considered an awkward match for coffee, have quietly become standard in domestic coffee shops and a reliable traffic driver for coffee brands.

After a Shanghai coffee shop paired jianbing guozi with coffee, the traditional-snack-plus-coffee formula spread to cafes across the country.

In Ningbo you will find coffee with cifan fan, fried dough sticks and scallion pancakes; in Chaozhou, coffee with wu mi guo and taro guo; in Kunming, coffee with a preserved-vegetable braised pork pancake; in Jingdezhen, fried dough stick with mochi plus coffee; in Shantou, coffee with Chaoshan rice rolls; and in Guangzhou, coffee with all kinds of steamer dim sum.

By now the pairings have moved well beyond pastries and cakes. More and more shops are matching coffee with bowl-style food: radish and beef offal with coffee, all sorts of bowl noodles with coffee, all sorts of pot noodles with coffee, and so on.

Traditional snacks have become the default mainly because people are no longer only after a Western pastry pairing. They are turning to everyday, down-to-earth Chinese snacks that fit more consumption occasions and meet the needs of Chinese consumers better.

Will Chinese Snacks + Coffee Become a Future Trend?

For many people, Chinese snacks plus coffee is already a breakfast or lunch combination. It is about as everyday as it gets; the only change is that a snack from shop A and a coffee from shop B can now be had under one roof.

Some of these sets cost a few yuan more than buying the two separately, yet they have firmly won over young consumers. The pairing delivers a small shock: coffee is almost always imagined alongside Western food, so the East-meets-West combination feels novel to a lot of people.

Will this become a new trend for cafes? Nothing is absolute, but everything has to be accepted somewhere along the way, and someone has to take that first step.

Beyond plain curiosity, the consumption and eating habits of young people today keep shifting, and more of them are willing to break with the old, fixed pairing rules.

Compared with a Western pastry pairing, Chinese snacks are a more everyday, higher-frequency choice for Chinese consumers. Read sideways, it also shows that coffee is becoming ordinary in people's minds, part of daily life for more and more of them.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Sweetness is what makes a snack pairing work, and honey-processed coffee delivers it most directly. FrontStreet Blackberry is a high-altitude single origin from Costa Rica, a country known for honey processing. The fruit is floated to remove bad cherries and debris, then de-pulped with the mucilage left on the bean and dried in the sun; because that mucilage is full of sugar, it oxidises and darkens as the drying days pass. Black honey retains the most mucilage of all, ferments the deepest and tastes the sweetest, which is why it sits closest to a natural process. FrontStreet roasts this coffee medium-light so the cup shows sweet florals, grape, sweet orange and a chocolate-liqueur note.

For something rounder and sweeter to linger over, FrontStreet Queen's Estate comes from Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, and is a rare Yellow Bourbon. Medium roasted, it opens with the rich aroma of roasted peanut and dark chocolate, then the bitterness fades into a gentle sweetness that holds. Pulled on a moka pot or espresso machine it shows fine crema and a full body, and as an americano or a latte it is especially rich and sweet.

If you prefer a fruitier cup with your pastry, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy is an espresso blend bringing together single origins from three different regions. It carries rose on the nose, while americanos and lattes show grape, dried blueberry, sweet orange and fruit candy for a distinctly layered cup.