All DAY COFFEE

street style coffee stand inside the GRANFRONT OSAKA bld. B1 floor. balanced coffee, doughnuts and light lunch. and! their shop goods are so cool!

If you are near Osaka Station and need a good cup of coffee, this is the place to go. It doesn’t open till 10am but it is worth the wait. The shop is located on B1 in the middle tower and is also surrounded by lots of great restaurants if you are hungey or just want to look around after getting your coffee fix. I had the latte which was smooth and had wonderful favor. The baristas were awesome and made you feel welcome. Great coffee and atmosphere.

All Day Coffee describes itself (boastfully) as the «best local hangout» and a «cultural engineering stand» and I guess they’re not entirely incorrect. All Day Coffee is the lovechild of design gurus TRANSIT GENERAL OFFICE (of the bills and Max Brenner Chocolate Bar fame) and Kona enthusiasts Bird Feather Nobu (of Toriba Café and Doctor’s Café, both in Tokyo), so other than the fact that their location at Umekita Ship kind of makes it hard for it to be anyone’s local hangout (unless you’re a bum living near Umeda Station), all the ingredients are most definitely there.
All Day Coffee is heavily committed to the Third Wave Coffee movement (i.e. coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, as opposed to a commodity) but in a not-​so snooty rub-​it-​in-​your face kind of way that is giving this hipster-​driven movement a bad rap. Take for example the layout of the café itself. It takes up a measly corner in the bottom floor of the Umekita Ship complex surrounded by food court-​calibre (although Japanese food court and American food court establishments are miles beyond comparison) restaurants, where patrons sit on what resemble uncomfortable benches as opposed to comfy plush seats. Rather than resemble a café or any kind of a sit-​in culinary institution, All Day Coffee more closer resembles a food truck that opens from both sides — a little taste of Brooklyn in Osaka, perhaps.
And now the coffee. Like all respectable Third Wave coffee joints, All Day seems to have a rigorous roasting schedule which they display on a board for all to see. They also offer their selections in variable formats (siphon, pour-​over, press) with many different single origin varieties. Seeing as how it was 32 degrees outside and 3pm in the afternoon when I went, I opted for the iced house blend, which gave me just enough jolt to soldier on with the rest of my day; they also have various pastries and donuts here produced by the Jiyugaoka Bake Shop back in Tokyo as well.
All in all, very well-​executed concept which fully deserves its own storefront; I hear Japanese celebs have a penchant of buying All Day Coffee design apparel which tends to stir some consumers into neglecting the coffee portion and going straight back to the «swag» section, which is a damn shame.