Story behind the Faces – Hideout Café, Sai Ying Pun
Timeless coffee, priceless life – so says the writing on the wall in Hideout Café, the café just opposite Centre Street Market. The cozy exterior belies a café with character, whose 27-year-old owner, Alvis Lee, put much thought and work into making the café a small respite from the daily stresses of life in Hong Kong.
Alvis, the café owner, thought of this writing to remind himself and his customers that life is short, slow down and just enjoy a good cup of coffee. Make time for yourself and others in Hong Kong.
Thoughtful Café with Personal Touch - As a young café owner operating his first business, you can tell from talking to him that he thinks thoroughly in how to make his café stand out and have his customers enjoy the experience. Before starting a café, he worked in a coffee and cake shop to learn the basics of the trade but unsatisfied with just that experience, he went on to take professional classes in barista and coffee brewing. There are intricate details in coffee, food and decor to invite in a customer.
This yummy Hideout jumbo breakfast is value-for-money and paired with the dark, nutty flavor of their lattes, make for a lazy relaxing Saturday morning. Best news is that there is 20% LocalHood discount.
Hideout is a cozy café with character
Dark, nutty coffee beans of single origin and in-house brewed coffee syrups are the mainstays at Hideout. The vanilla, mocha and caramel coffee syrups are made fresh weekly. For the vanilla syrups, he makes them weekly from extracting vanilla seeds from vanilla sticks and brews them standing before the stove on a low fire for 1 hour. As for the mocha syrup, it is made using a 60% dark chocolate home-made ganache. So if you haven’t tried out flavoured coffee, then Hideout is a good place to start. Alvis also developed a themed coffee just for Halloween – pumpkin latte with pumpkin’s sweetness in their lattes. Having started his café in Sai Ying Pun just early last year, Alvis was among the first businesses supportive of our mission to bring the community and businesses in the neighbourhood together through a common platform -LocalHood. When asked what he would say to new vendors who are asked to join LocalHood’s community of vendors, his answer was: “Try it out! It brought me more customers. It’s also great to see vendors and customers supporting each other. My café could be a customer of another LocalHood vendor. For example, if my café needs flowers, I can get a 20% LocalHood discount from the nearby LocalHood-affiliated flower shop.”. Life is priceless and so is support from vendors and neighbours in the community in Hong Kong in making our community a more sharing and caring one.
