FULL OF BEANS: A shop attendant sets out packs of coffee beans at Bakoel Koffie shop at Jl. Cikini Raya, Central Jakarta. Although many cafes serves international tastes, coffee fanatics still crave local coffee beans like those from Toraja.

Espresso. Cappuccino. Vietnamese coffee. Java brew.

As drinking coffee has become fashionable for most Jakartans, coffee shops, owned by locals and foreigners, have mushroomed in the capital.

Still, true aficionados tend to inhabit cafes that stock a selection of exceptional coffee, using fine-roasted beans sourced from various places in Indonesia.

"People may mix this and that to make coffee drinks with different names and tastes," Bakoel Koffie marketing manager Syenny Chatrine Widjaja told The Jakarta Post recently.

"But in this coffee shop, we use only Indonesian coffee beans from the arabica and robusta varieties," the fourth generation owner of the 130-year-old coffee shop said.

In an outlet on Jl. Cikini, Central Jakarta, Syenny unraveled the history of Bakoel Koffie over a glass of recommended Java Brew.

"Bakoel Koffie may be Jakarta's oldest coffee shop that sells both coffee drinks and powdered coffee. The latter is actually our core business," she said.

With a commitment to preserve the country's traditional identity, Bakoel Koffie bears a logo of a woman clad in a traditional cloth of kebaya while carrying bakoel -- a finely woven bamboo basket -- on her head.

Koffie means coffee in Dutch, Syenny said, representing the coffee shop's Dutch colonial era roots.

It started all with a food stall on Jl. Hayam Wuruk in West Jakarta.

"My great grandfather, Tek Sun Ho, often bought groceries from women who carried bakoel on their heads," she said.

"He was also offered coffee beans by those saleswomen. He began regularly buying coffee beans."

For some time, Tek roasted coffee beans traditionally, using only frying pans, Syenny said.

Tek's ability to make "good black coffee" saw his regular companies become fanatics for his brew, she said.

"His coffee simply became more popular than the dishes he sold, so he decided in 1878 to focus on the coffee business," she said.

Bakoel Koffie has continued growing, and today serves customers in six outlets: on Jl. Cikini, in Mega Kuningan business district, in Bintaro housing complex as well as Jl. Senopati and Jl. Barito, in South Jakarta and in La Piazza shopping mall, North Jakarta.

Surviving fierce competition for decades, Syenny said the key to making a good coffee was during the roasting process.

"Coffee roasting needs an expertise that not all people have. We maintain our product through our expertise," she said.

She said Bakoel Koffie only kept roasted coffee beans for two days to guarantee their freshness.

"If you sell only (the atmosphere of) cafes in this business, you'll collapse rapidly," she said.

Another cafe entrepreneur, Irvan Ilham, said he was building his dream through his coffee shop -- Anomali Coffee.

While sipping a glass of espresso on a Saturday morning, Irvan told the Post about his mission to introduce "Indonesia's fine and unique coffee beans to the world".

"Every region in Indonesia produces crops of coffee. Each tangs and tastes different," he said.

"We want Indonesian coffee varieties to be famous throughout the world by roasting and selling only local breeds," he added.

Chatting with the Post at the nine-month-old Anomali on Jl. Senopati, Irvan said he and his partner Muhammad Abgari (Agam) began working on their business in August 2005.

"We were separated. I was attending a university here, while Agam was taking college in Brisbane, Australia," he said.

He said the duo had gone on adventurous journeys throughout the archipelago, chasing local coffees to source before opening their business.

Their journeys have resulted in various products being displayed in the cafe, which doubles as a show room, Irvan said.

The local coffee beans are imported from Aceh, North Sumatra, East Java, Bali and South Sulawesi.

With a plan to take over the markets of international powdered coffee brands, Irvan said the duo served coffee made from local beans they roasted and mixed for coffee shops at malls and hotels.

"We can sell powdered coffee at much lower prices," he said.

An international coffee brand can sell for Rp 100,000 (US$10.87) per 100 grams, while a breed of Anomali coffee is priced at Rp 150,000 per kilogram, according to Irvan.

As "most Jakartans only have a sketchy idea about coffee", Irvan said he and Agam also had made their coffee hub a learning center.

"Customers can learn how to operate a coffee roasting machine and share knowledge about coffee here," he said.

Anomali holds a "cupping class" on weekends teaching people about the different characteristics of Indonesian coffee varieties.

Similar to Anomali and Bakoel Koffie, the owner of coffee shop Phoenam on Jl. Wahid Hasyim, Central Jakarta, is also a die-hard for local coffee beans. The cafe mixes and serves beans from South Sulawesi, known as Toraja coffee.

"Why bother using foreign varieties, while our ones are fine?" Phoenam owner Albert Liongadi told the Post.

Albert said his cafe was named Phoenam as it was first to open in Makassar, South Sulawesi. "Phoenam" means "a transit at south" in Chinese.

Phoenam was first established in Jakarta in 1997 and now has two shops.

"The success of my coffee shops in Makassar brought me here," he told the Post.

"I realized there was a big opportunity here when I visited Jakarta. Jakarta did not have coffee shops that offered traditionally-made coffee drinks, and it still doesn't," he said.

Not only is Albert preserving the method of coffee-making his late father Liong Thay Aiong passed down, he is also planning to penetrate the international coffee market.

"We have fine local coffee breeds, especially the Toraja ones. Our product will be a blast in the world market," he said.

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