Kinmokusei latte at Verve Coffee Roasters.
Even though Verve Coffee is originally from Santa Cruz California, I decided to add it in Hola Japon because in Japan Verve Coffee has one of the best lattes we have ever tried in our lives: Kinmokusei latte!
Kinmokusei (金木犀) latte can be translated as Fragrant Olive Latte, which is a flower with Asian origin that smells really good. In Japan, Kinmokusei is our way to know that Autumn just started. Starting in October, when you go for a walk, from a sudden everywhere you go starts to smell very sweet as if someone just sprayed their perfume all around the street. It is beautiful!
Kinmokusei (fragrant olive) flower picture I recently took.
What makes it special
First, as previously mentioned, their Kinmokusei latte. The only thing is that this is a winter-only drink, so it is sold only from October to late February. Japan is the only country where I’ve heard about this type of latte and it is delicious. It has a very unique sweet taste.
This is something a bit personal hehe, but one more reason why this drink is special to us is because the day after I proposed to my wife, we went to Verve and had kinmokusei latte for the first time while we were on a video call with my best friend to share the news 🤭
If you are not visiting Japan in the winter, no worries, Verve also has the following things that still make it special:
Coffee shop environment. There are Verve coffee shops also in Roppongi (Tokyo) and Kamakura Kanagawa, but the Kita-Kamakura one feels even better because you can sit outside with a view to nature and the beautiful Kita-Kamakura old Japanese-style architecture.
Coffee beans. When we are there, we usually also buy a bag of Ethiopia coffee beans. It tastes very good! If they don’t have Ethiopia, any light roast beans should also be decently good.
There is usually at least 1 person from the stuff who speaks English. I’ve always felt that Verve has a more open-minded environment where some of their baristas experienced living abroad. This makes it a bit friendlier to tourists.
What to order
Anything from the previous section that makes it special. A regular latte is also quite good because of the beans they use. If it isn’t winter, they will more likely also have in their menu other seasonal types of coffee drinks or lattes that you don’t regularly find in other coffee shops, so those could also be a good option.
They have English in their menu or you can just simply order a latte and they will understand.