I first discovered Dark Arts as a roaster, enjoying its coffee at various places, including London’s The Black Chapel, Chester’s Little Yellow Pig and Manchester’s Idle Hands and Siop Shop. This summer, after much patient encouragement on twitter from Mike Stanbridge, I finally visited I Will Kill Again, Dark Arts’ coffee shop/roastery in Homerton in East London. That safely out of the way, I thought I’d collect the full set, using trip to Japan in August/September this year to visit Dark Arts’ Japanese outpost in Hayama, a small town in the Kanagawa prefecture, southwest of Tokyo.
Like I Will Kill Again, this is a coffee shop/roastery which opened in July 2018, although the Probat roaster was only installed in April this year. Prior to that, the coffee was imported from the UK roastery. The offering will be very familiar to anyone used to Dark Arts Coffee, with the likes of Lost Highway on espresso. This, like its UK counterpart, is a single-origin Nicaraguan, and while it has a similar taste profile, it’s a different bean. The coffee menu, meanwhile, is more typically Japanese, with plenty of iced options and various coffee cocktails. There’s also an all-day, western brunch menu, complete with specials.