Gallery Drip Coffee BANGKOK
Whilst in the shopping centres of Bangkok people impatiently wait their turn to ask someone in a green apron for this seasons newest flavour before accelerating out the door, customers at Gallery Drip Coffee are stopping the clock and trading it in for the finest whole bean coffee in the “City of Angels”.
Located on the bottom floor of the Bangkok Art & Culture Center (BACC), this micro-sized Third-Wave cafe began its life as an art project that was organised by the Art Center to utilise its three floors of shop spaces that were unoccupied and in need of a new lease of life.
Each shop space was assigned with an artist or art collective and a outline to create something of use to the art community, whether it was as a profit-generating initiative or not. For the team at Gallery Drip Coffee, this made for a unique opportunity to share their admiration for whole bean coffee and the meditation-like practice of a well measured and poured drip coffee, from grind to the cup. Eventually, when the time came for the project to stop, visitors to the BACC were so accustomed to stopping the clocks and enjoying their coffee, the team decided to continue their endeavour to provide the best cup of coffee in Bangkok indefinitely.
The mastermind behind Gallery Drip Coffee and the cafe that arose from that original art project was Piyachat Trithaworn – a photographer by trade – who had a discovered his own love for whole bean coffee after researching and spending time amongst the farmers in the coffee fields in Northern Thailand, before falling in love with the slow methodical process of the hand coffee grinder.
Hand coffee grinders of all shapes, sizes, and eras decorate the small coffee shop where space is limited, but not for art work. Coming from an art project origin, Gallery Drip Coffee is decorated throughout with coffee-inspired photography, drawings, and other coffee-themed pieces that add a relaxed, yet thought inspiring atmosphere.
There are only a handful of seats to choose from between the hand coffee grinders and the coffee bar itself, and given that so many people arrive and “depart” from the outside world for so long, it might be hard to find a seat at first; but hold out. It’s worth it for the little coffee shop atmosphere that you cherish. The fact that the coffee is out of this world only adds to the occasion.
Gallery Drip Coffee only keep a few choice beans in store for use in their drip and filter coffee, all carefully chosen from select farms in the Chiang Mai region of Thailand and a few from Central and South America, before being finally roasted in Gallery Drip Coffee’s own private roasting location in Bangkok.
Drip coffee is the best choice on the menu due to the high quality taste beans so purposefully chosen, but it’s the method and WATCHING the method that make it worth waiting for.
Piyachat first selects his beans before hand grinding them for each and every cup. Watching the whole process from grind, to the first bloom, before ending finally with the last drop through the per-cup filter, makes it worth stopping your clock.
Gallery Drip Coffee isn’t a digital nomad’s dream. It’s small, yet bright. Quiet, but not like a graveyard. It’s not a coffee shop to work in, more a cafe to lose yourself in for hours at a time. It’s for coffee connoisseurs to enjoy each others company and to enjoy a nurtured cup of coffee, from grind to the last drip.
Many Thanks to Dale and France of Anglo Italian Follow Us for sharing this Best Little Coffee Shop with us.
