If you’ve ever dealt with a downtown Yangon estate agent, Cafe Deja Brew will feel like something you have already experienced.
The tad neglected colonial-era building was probably flaunted to apartment hunters, who may have nodded knowingly at the mysterious hook on its high ceiling and shuffled up the staircase until their hair touched the ceiling.
But where one might have seen a wild card lodging, May Cho, 31, saw a space to showcase fledgling artists and sip Myanmar coffee.
There’s a mish-mash of furniture downstairs, which will soon be replaced by tables and chairs made from window frames, and short-legged tables for shoes-off patrons upstairs.
On the shelves are brown paper bags spelling “drink coffee please” in Burmese script and old curiosities such as a red Japanese rotary dial telephone from 1978 alongside a 1950s American typewriter that customers can use.
May Cho noticed that young people were swapping teashops for cafes and quit her job of five years at a consumer goods giant to open Deja Brew, where she will offer the walls for free to painters and photographers.
Over the past six months she has studied a range of Myanmar beans and uses a nuanced selection from Pa-O communities in southern Shan State.
“Coffee shop owners sometimes buy from Thailand and I feel sad because our coffee is really great,” she says. “I support local farmers and will only use local beans.”
House coffee is 1,500 kyats and everything from an espresso to a pumpkin frappe cost between 1,500-3,500 kyats. Fresh juice cost 2,000 kyats and smoothies 3,000 kyats.
The food is also reasonably priced and varied. Cooked with the help of May Cho’s mother, Burmese dishes such as dried shrimp and chicken or butterfish with steamed rice cost 3,000-3,500 kyats and snacks such as the chicken chapatti wrap or peanut butter and condensed milk on toast are 1,500-3,500 kyats. There are also some Thai and fusion choices.
Deja Brew sells Tree Food traditional sweets, the first of a line of local creations it plans to endorse. Despite its concrete floor, the café is a homely place with little charms in the form of complimentary water served in pretty enamel cups and gentle indie music playing in the background.
It has all the ingredients to become a creative hangout and the added strength of being neighbours with a bookshop-cum-exhibition that boasts an ambitiously titled “Amber Museum.”