Kapihan is back and better than ever

Kapihan has relocated! Thank goodness it’s back on the streets of Battersea, we’ve missed their coffees, bakes and hospitality. We were so excited that we gathered our belongings and rushed down to their new location on 547 Battersea Park Road to see if it was as good as we remembered.

…It was. Ok, we’ll start from the top. If you’re not familiar with Kapihan, let us fill you in; they are a Filipino cafe that serve the most delightful coffees, speciality drinks and traditional Filipino bakes. Everything they do is ‘in house’. From the syrups in their drink specials to the labour intensive process of making their famed bibingka, it all happens in their coffee shop. And you can tell. It’s the still-warm pastries and the aroma of freshly ground beans that makes this place so special. In our opinion this really the best of the best.

To give you an impression of how incredibly popular Kapihan is, we went down on a weekday morning at 10am and the classic bibingka was already sold out. Luckily for us, there were some other flavours on offer. There was an adobo mushroom option or a meatier tocino (a filipino bacon) and queso bibingka. We went for the latter and quickly fell in love. The main texture of the muffin was unlike anything we’d had before. Made from coconut flour, it was spongy and moist and tasted good. Like, really good. For just £3.50 a pop this really beats an Egg McMuffin and we’d seriously suggest you mix up your usual breakfast to make a b-line for one of these instead. Each bibingka takes 8-10 minutes to bake and is cooked in a traditional oven, which has little compartments for each muffin. Because of the temperature disparities they have to be monitored all the time and shuffled between compartments to make sure they bake evenly. It’s a labour of love that you can really taste in every bite.

They don’t just stop at bibingkas. They’ve got other options (we’ve got our eyes on one of those cassava cake slices for next time) and specials frequently pop up, so keep an eye out for those. Having only opened a week or so ago the cafe isn’t quite running at full capacity yet, but when the team gets more settled there will likely be a wider selection of delicious bakes for you to pick up.

Of course, we had a couple of the coffees too. We were recommended two of their specials- the malted karamelo (house made coconut caramel in their classic latte) and the banilya vean latte (a latte with a whole bean vanilla syrup). What a stunning duo. The former was a less sweet and we loved that the taste of the coconut really came through. The latter was a huge favourite- the whole vanilla pods floating in a coffee felt extremely luxurious and it was a morning pick-me-up we will be thinking about for a while.

Kapihan does ‘cafe’ differently, and they’ve carved out their niche really effectively. They’ve got the most friendly team to accompany their unique menu- a recipe for being an easy favourite. On opening day of their new location they had a queue round the block for 4 hours. They’re popular for a reason and we wish them every luck in their new location. Kapihan, welcome back!