You can try Ink & Lion if you happen to be in the area and I have a slightly better luck with espresso drink than drip.  The drip brew skill is good and I can only hope that the quality of its roast work catches up with its good brew skill soon.  Apart from being listed in 7 Good Cafes In Sukhumvit, Bangkok: The Sprudge Coffee Guide, an article on the coffee news website Sprudge, I got to know this café from drinking its coffee a while back when some coffee lover carried it back to Hong Kong. At the time, I was mostly impressed with its bag design than the coffee itself. Let see how the real café is.

In addition to its beautiful coffee bag design, Ink & Lion is famous for the meaning of the shop name, which I still don’t quite get it, and the odd shop schedule/hours ie the shop closes on Wednesday to Friday. So be on the lookout whether it opens before you pay a visit there.  Let start with Cappuccino, as usual. I get a nice body which implies a good milk frothing but the cup felt tight with a hint of dirtiness toward the finish. Mind you that the feeling toward overall cup is sort of bearable but it could be better. What is not quite desirable in the cappuccino shows up in espresso. I get nothing much from the coffee ie a sort of caramel tone in the cup, following by baker’s chocolate which feels almost dirty ie luckily the dirtiness toward the back of the cup wasn’t that strong. I think the pull was ok though it can be better.  The espresso blend used here is Chapter 01, the Four Mountain blend which is roasted by Pacamara, one of the established independent roasters in Thailand.  Of note is that while there are four beans in this blend ie coffee from Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand, the coffee blend doesn’t feel that much complex as the number of beans seems to suggest, IMHO.  Nevertheless, this is not the first I have blend from these many bean sources in Thailand that ends up as a rather simple cup of coffee vs. my expectation of lots of beans used.  Ink & Lion has a small roasting machine inside its shop which is made in Indonesia, according to its roaster and owner. This small roasting machine is designated for its single origin coffee program, including coffee that is packed into its own award winning design coffee bag.  Its drip coffee offering on that day is mostly African and local bean so I opted for a more familiar coffee from Colombia for my drip. It is the same coffee that I had from Ekkamai Macchiato on this trip. 
When hot, I get a strong Chinese medicine in the cup. Cooler, the hint of grass and vegetable, kinda like the greenish taste of water that you use to cook vegetable that shows up clearly. While it’s not hard to taste some sweetness in the cup, it was dominated by these greenish water that used to cook vegetable. Surprisingly, this is the only shop in this trip that I get greenish tone which implies that no matter what local said, the ‘light’ roast fad hasn’t fully arrived or taken hold of Thai coffee scene unlike what we suffer in Hong Kong. Maybe not yet? Another good thing about this cup is the brew skill which is clean and clear, showing off what the coffee has to offer. But it’s not a blessing as the good brew skill becomes a penalty for the overall cup as it showcases the coffee and the roast skill well. Too well I would say as it easily shows the greenish tone clearly.  To me, this implies that Ink & Lion drip brew skill is well ahead of its roast work. IMHO, this set the stage for more good things to come as the shop owners seem to be more than willing to listen to customer’s opinions in order to improve its coffee offering. This simple notion sounds simple but, from my experience, it is not easy to come by from coffee people in Bangkok, particularly those famous ones.  In a way, only just this makes Ink & Lion a coffee a destination to visit as the willingness to listen to customers should result in an improvement on its coffee offering in the future. Coupling with a nice decoration of the shop which makes it rather comfortable to sit, Ink & Lion is worth a visit if you are in the area for now.