Taipei was featured on a list compiled by a US travel service Web site of the top 10 cities around the world that offer unique and delicious coffee drinks.
“As surprising as it might seem to the uninitiated, great coffee is part of Taiwan’s national heritage. Freshly roasted, high-quality beans are standard, and slow, labor-intensive brewing methods pave the way to genuinely good coffee,” Christine Sarkis said in her article, titled World’s 10 Best Cities for Coffee and posted on SmarterTravel.com on Oct. 26.
Taipei is the only Asian city on the list that Sarkis, a senior editor at SmarterTravel, described as places that “celebrate the essence of the bean, each in a unique and delicious way.”
Other places that made it onto the list are Vienna, Austria; Seattle in the US state of Washington; Havana, Cuba; Melbourne, Australia; Lisbon, Portugal; Portland, Oregon; Oslo, Norway; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Vancouver, Canada.
As the author acknowledged, the list leaves off some favorites and has drawn critics, one of whom was upset over the absence of Italian cities from the list.
In response to the survey, people in the Taiwanese coffee business yesterday said they were glad their efforts have received recognition, adding that “the glory today has been the result of our hard work.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator-at-Large and owner of Cafe Philo, Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君), said the “Taipei coffee” the survey referred to may actually mean the coffee industry across the country. She added that the survey shows that Taiwanese have put great effort into making coffee, she said.
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