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Food

An Indonesian Coffee Pop-up Brings Pandan Lattes to San Jose

At Hijau, coffee drinks are infused with tropical flavors like pineapple and torched lemongrass.
Octavio Peña
Two baristas posing for a portrait in front of an outdoor coffee stand.
Lisa Maria (left) and Ryan Prawiradjaja started Hijau in February 2024. The coffee pop-up is a regular at San Jose's Rose Garden Farmers Market. (Octavio Peña)

Indonesian coffee shops are sprouting up in the Bay Area, introducing local caffeine hounds to aromatic, uniquely tropical drinks. The newest addition to the scene is Hijau, a coffee pop-up in San Jose known for crafting lattes with flavors like pineapple, coconut, lemongrass and ginger.

South Bay residents Lisa Maria and Ryan Prawiradjaja started Hijau in February of 2024. Maria was born and raised in Bekasi, the largest city in West Java, Indonesia, and immigrated to the United States 15 years ago for college. But when she was laid off from her job as a product manager at a tech startup last year, she decided to revisit an earlier dream. “I’ve always thought about starting a coffee shop,” Maria says. “My mom and dad were coffee roasters in the ’80s.”

Her parents’ business supplied roasted coffee beans to local vendors in Bekasi. Maria was too young to enjoy the beverage at the time, but she remembers the aroma of coffee in her childhood home. Now, she and her husband are continuing the tradition by bringing the smell of freshly brewed coffee into the life of their newborn daughter.

Overhead view of a latte with foam milk art, topped with a slice of roasted ginger.
Inspired by a traditional Indonesian hot drink, Hijau’s wedang latte comes topped with a slice of torched ginger. (Octavio Peña)

So what exactly makes Hijau’s approach to coffee specifically Indonesian? For starters, some of the drinks are based on traditional Indonesian treats. As Maria puts it, “I think of coffee as my canvas to introduce Indonesian flavors.” Klepon, a pandan rice ball coated with shredded coconut and filled with molten palm sugar, inspired a latte made with pandan-infused palm sugar syrup, coconut milk and a coconut-flake garnish. Nastar, a bite-sized pineapple jam tart, gets reconstructed into a pineapple syrup–spiked latte humming with notes of clove and cinnamon. While the drinks are based on desserts, they’re not cloyingly sweet. Instead, they’re fine-tuned to allow the delicate flavors to shine through.

For other drinks, Maria and Prawiradjaja drew inspiration from wedang, a category of hot drinks that can be made with peanuts, mung beans or ginger. Hijau’s wedang latte is made by infusing palm sugar syrup with torched ginger and lemongrass. It’s influenced by wedang jahe, a hot ginger drink popular in the highlands. Maria describes it as a seasonal alternative to a pumpkin spice latte. “We don’t even have that kind of coffee flavor in Indonesia,” says Maria. “So I can take inspiration from what is existing and introduce that flavor in coffee.”

Pandan, an aromatic leaf commonly used in Southeast Asian cooking, is a buzzy ingredient at cafes and pastry shops around the Bay, but Maria felt that many renditions weren’t living up to the herb’s potential. “I was underwhelmed by the flavor,” says Maria, “I couldn’t taste the fragrance. I really wanted to represent it well.” Her pandan latte is subtle, grassy and bright green — it’s Maria’s favorite creation and the shop’s most popular drink.

Iced coffee drink mixed with green-tinted milk.
An iced pandan latte — Hijau’s most popular drink. (Octavio Peña)

In the Bay Area, you won’t come across many bakeries offering freshly baked nastar or restaurants serving klepon for dessert. “Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world and the largest economy in Southeast Asia,” says Maria. “Why aren’t there more Indonesian establishments here?” In the past few years, a handful of Indonesian restaurants have opened up and gotten some buzz for their takes on classic dishes like bakso and beef rendang.

While Indonesia is one of the top coffee-producing countries in the world, its coffee is not as popular in the U.S. as the roasts coming from other, more well-known coffee regions (in South and Central America, for instance). Coffee beans from the Indonesian island of Sumatra have long been a staple at third-wave coffee shops, but until recently, there weren’t any cafes that used these beans exclusively or that specialized in Indonesian-inspired coffee drinks. So far there are only a couple other spots — most notably Kopi Bar in Walnut Creek and Kopiku in San Francisco, which both source Indonesian coffee beans through Beaneka Coffee, a local roastery. Hijau doesn’t use Indonesian beans yet but plans to in the next phase of the business.

Maria believes part of the reason Indonesian cuisine is underrepresented in the Bay Area is due to the relatively recent arrival of that immigrant community. It wasn’t until the ’80s and ’90s that there was a large wave of Indonesian immigration to the States, she explains.

“A lot of us put our roots down here,” says Maria. “More Indonesians are settling down in the U.S. and they want to keep the heritage and tastes of home here.”

Close-up of a barista pour milk into a coffee drink.
A barista pours milk into one of Hijau’s Indonesian-inspired specialty coffee drinks. (Octavio Peña)

She hopes that Hijau inspires more Indonesians to start their own businesses in the Bay Area. Her goal is to hook coffee lovers with Indonesian flavors before introducing them to the terroir of coffee beans from across Indonesia — specifically, those produced through giling basah (wet grinding), a process that originated in Indonesia that creates a distinct woody, earthy flavor.

The couple plans to eventually open a brick-and-mortar coffee shop where they can continue to connect with the community. “It’s a bridge between my roots and future legacy,” says Maria. “I want our daughter to have her heritage represented when she grows up.”

Hijau pops up at the San Jose Rose Garden farmers market (577 Dana Ave) every Saturday. They’ll have two more pop-ups this winter — on Jan. 4 and 11, from 9 a.m.–1 p.m. — before taking a break until March 15, For more information about future pop-ups, check out Hijau’s Instagram page.

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